Much as I enjoy a Michelin-starred moan, even I am not going to complain about the reduction in ticket prices for our first season at the Olympic Stadium. But – and this is quite a big “but” – it pays never to forget the old American adage that there ain’t no free lunch.
Actually, without wishing to start an argument with myself, it is now possible to get a free lunch in the UK thanks to an increasingly popular phenomenon of small independent restaurants that, rather than charge a set price, ask customers to pay what they think their meal is worth. Had a similar system been in operation at Upton Park in recent years there are times when the club would have been paying us to watch the football. But I digress.
It is a safe bet that luncheon at the Olympic Stadium will not be gratis. Not if Sam Allardyce’s column in last Friday’s Evening Standard is anything to go by.
“If season ticket prices are lower, fans will arrive at the ground in a better frame of mind. Once they are in, if they can get served properly and quickly with a drink or food, they’ll be even more positive.”
Aha. So the groans around Upton Park since Christmas are down to the fact it takes ages to get served at half time rather than a growing tendency to pass the ball sideways at every available opportunity. Thanks for clearing that up Sam. Sorry. I shouldn’t have interrupted. Please, go on.
“If you want proof, go to a major sporting event in the US. Everyone there gets what they want, when they want it. The fans come a couple hours before the event starts. The family likes being there, they can enjoy a hot dog, burger, popcorn or whatever they want and they don’t have to wait.”
Call me an old cynic, but reading between the lines I interpret that to mean: “We’ll get the supporters into the ground as early as possible and recoup the short-term hit we’re going to take on season ticket prices by charging top dollar for everything else that goes with the matchday experience.”
This strategy will be helped no end by the fact the club will have a virtual monopoly on providing food and drink when we go to Stratford because there’s burger all else in the vicinity (did you see what I did there?)
Personally, I don’t want to buy my hot dog from a West Ham franchised retail outlet – I want to get it from the stall in Priory Road, having had a pint in a pub of my choosing beforehand. And when my kids were younger I wouldn’t have wanted to force-fed them popcorn for two hours in an effort to keep them quiet. (Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have had any problems with that. But Di, my wife, has rather higher dietary standards than me and would have most certainly objected if she’d caught me doing it.)
In those heady, happy days of long ago when we didn’t have children and could afford relatively lavish holidays, Di and I went to the States. And while we were there we pre-empted Sam’s advice from last week and went to a major sporting event in the shape of an NFL game.
This was the Eighties, and American football was new to this country. I developed a taste for the sport by watching it on Channel Four, but back then they rarely showed a game in full – it was generally highlights. All of which meant I wasn’t as familiar then as I am now with gridiron’s rather eccentric timekeeping.
In theory, each half last 30 minutes. But the clock is stopped frequently and, as a result, the first period can last well over an hour – which can cause a man to develop a serious thirst when he’s sitting in the Tampa Bay afternoon heat with nothing between the top of his head and the baking sun. Then there’s a two-minute warning that the interval is approaching – which isn’t anything like two minutes. But, being new to the ways of the game, I didn’t know that.
When watching West Ham I never nip off early for a half-time pint. This, however, wasn’t Upton Park, so I suggested to Di we used this helpful two-minute warning to slip of to the bar and beat the rush for once. It’s fair to say she needed no second invitation.
In the cavernous bar below the stand the serving staff (who all wanted to introduce themselves personally and establish a first-name relationship which you don’t always find in E13) were clearly surprised to see us. It turns out that American football’s idea of two minutes is more like what the rest of the world thinks of as a quarter of an hour.
On the plus side, it did give us a chance to devour a couple of leisurely chilli dogs before turning our attention to the selection of real ales and fine wines that were on offer. Like Sam says, in America you can anything you want. As long as it’s Budweiser.
Where we did a have a choice was over the question of size: small, medium or large. We had only been in the States 48 hours and hadn’t come to appreciate that an American “large” is not the same as it is here. So that’s what we ordered. The polystyrene cup I was given so big I could have taken off my shoes and socks and paddled in the insipid liquid therein. I would defy Adrian to get his hands round one of those beauties (and, yes, I realise he prefers St Miguel to Bud).
If I remember correctly, we were still trying to finish our drinks when they sounded the two-minute warning for the end of the game an hour or so later, but it was all a long time ago and my memory’s not what it once was.
However, I do recall that being dependent on a stadium to satisfy my every desire in the way Mr Allardyce outlined in his column is not my idea of what a matchday should be. The move to the OS is going to be hard for me – even if my season ticket is a good deal cheaper.
If this American-style vision of what lies ahead really awaits us at the OS, then perhaps we can go back to the future by reviving the idea of half-time entertainment. At the Superbowl they have the likes of Tina Turner and the Rolling Stones. We could have David Essex and Billy Bragg. Or, better still, we could get the Hammerettes out of mothballs.
The Hammerettes, you will no doubt recall, were a group of local lovelies who brightened the interval with some energetic dance routines for nine years until they were given the bullet four weeks before the start of the 2006-07 season. To be honest, I wasn’t their biggest fan. However, you had to give them top marks for effort. And as our back four could never move in unison, it’s probably unfair to have expected the half-time dance act to have done so.
Whenever I watched them perform I was reminded of a gag from a classic episode of Porridge in which Fletcher is telling Godber about how the dancing girls who made up Pan’s People were the highlight of Top of the Pops. “I always loved big beautiful Babs,” he tells his bemused young cell-mate, before adding after a brilliantly timed pause: “Never could remember her name though.”
But you won’t get me cracking 1970s double-entendre jokes like that. This site is better than that…