[Football] Are we the baddies?

[NorthstandRacoon]

It's not just the cost.

If I wasn't addicted to Brighton and Hove Albion I would have no interest at all in the Premier League. There is so much about it which is horrible........TV companies controlling fixture dates and times, so many dickhead players with outrageous wages making them out of touch with their fans, diving, rolling around shot on the pitch, the awful expansion of european football to the detriment of domestic football making prem clubs less focused on their home league, and, biggest one of all.....VAR which sucks the joy out of the game. These are off the top of my head, others will come to mind.

But......I am addicted to Brighton and Hove Albion and will continue supporting them home and away.

The gist of it for me, too.

Toursit fans also f*** me off. They don't add anything to the game bar their money, plus they get in the way! Love the Japanese here, mind, very nice people.

I love non-league, it's an excellent day and out and the gates are brilliant at Worthing whom I am yet to go and watch, usually at Burgess Hill where we can just get pissed and watch half decent football on the cheap.

The corporate greed and nature of the Prem and diluting of atmospheres and enjoyment, which have me really anti it, but I still think that as a club, it's incredible we are here.

 

[Steve in Japan]

It's not so much the baddies as the underisbables. To a degree, anyway.

The Albion, like all Premier League clubs, talk about the local (generally season ticket-holding) supporter as being a "legacy fan".

Legacy fans, when measured at an individual fixture level, don't bring in much cash. A legacy fan may buy a replica shirt each season, and a few other bit of merch too.

Each tourist fan will buy a shirt, a scarf, a mug and All. The. Stuff when they visit.

This means a seat filled with 19 tourists over the course of a season is going to generate far more for the club than that same seat filled with a man who lives 10 miles away.

Nineteen tourists > One legacy fan.

This is why some (BIG!) clubs have stopped selling season tickets, holding back seats received back from lapsed season ticket holders. They want to sell that seat 19 times over rather than once.

As much as we've all noticed the influx of Japanese fans as Mitoma Mania has taken off, we're still small fry when it comes to tourist fans, so the legacy fan is still very important to the Albion today.

Anything labelled "legacy" in life is generally no longer supported, gets no investment and only tolerated until it is no longer required. Gulp.......