Milking The “Franchise”

On taking over Liverpool Football Club, Tom Hicks said all the right things.  He said that: “We are completely passionate about winning”.

He also said that: “We didn’t come over here to be the guys who milk the franchise.”

Fast-forward 22 months and what do we have?

• The introduction of a £29 annual membership card.  This is intended to replace the £3.50 fancard, which was  marketed in the club’s own charter as “the only card that you will need with Liverpool Football Club”.

• The introduction of a similar £20 annual membership card for kids.  £20 for kids!  And no family discounts.

• A £3 increase in ticket prices – the price having previously increased by £1 per annum on average.

• The appalling decision to withdraw the Liverpool Development Association’s ticket allocation.  This will be replaced by more lucrative corporate seats.

• A halving of tickets to supporters clubs around the country.  These tickets will once again be going to the corporates.

When Liverpool fans talked of commercially improving Liverpool’s performance, they meant improving the merchandising and growing the LFC brand abroad.  They certainly didn’t mean fleecing existing fans, which is exactly what the self-styled “custodians” are now doing.

In addition to the above, our manager appears to have virtually nothing to spend in the transfer market, if recent comments are anything to go by:

“We know the situation regarding what we can spend, and we are trying to find solutions if we do not have enough money”

“And we will still try to sign players that will make us better. But if you do not have too much money, and that is clear, we will have to have a little bit of imagination to progress in the market”

“We know we will have to sell some players if we want some cash. So we have to do that”

“Our aim is to bring through young players and that can save us money, money that we can spend on big names”

“We have a fantastic group of young players, in the future they will save us money. At the moment we have to still by big names and the only way to do that is to sell players”

We’ve had huge increases in Sky TV money, three money-spinning runs to the latter stages of the Champions League and yet we have to sell to buy.

So where is all the money going?