A fellow season ticket holder challenged me on Sunday about the recent Sam Allardyce poll. He pointed out that the problem with the Internet poll on whether Sam should go or stay is it didn’t qualify whether the voters ever went to watch games. His argument was the poll should have been limited to match going fans who is his words ‘have to endure the football week in week out’. He couldn’t fathom how half of the voters want Sam Allardyce to stay as manager next season if they watched the matches.
His statement got me thinking about the modern status of fans and their power. The term ‘arm chair fan’ has often been used by match going fans as a put down to emphasise their own self importance and say within the club. The typical so called ‘Arm chair’ would only watch highlights on Match of the Day on Saturday but be very opinionated.
Today’s modern ‘Armchair fan’ has full access to all home and away games live in HD outside the UK and within the UK many fans now have access to internet streams many of which are becoming good quality and High Definition also. It could be argued the new breed of arm chair fan has more access and watches more of West Ham than the season ticket holder who goes to home games.
The money element is also starting to come into it. We currently have 21,000 season ticket holders leaving 14,000 tickets for away and West ham supporters each match. The combined revenue from ticket sales was £18m in 2013. By contrast we look likely to receive £77m from TV broadcast this season if we finish 11th. With an estimated turnover of around £115m this season that means match going fans provide just 16% of our income and season ticket holders less than 10%.
The new power is the billions of football fans around the world which make up the TV audience paying their TV subscriptions or watching adverts on Sky Sports, BT Sport, NBC or Fox Sports, and Al Jazeera Sports among other Premier League broadcasters. It is these TV companies and their customers who have the real power now. The TV companies want entertaining matches for their customers at time schedules to suit them. In years to come I can see all UK fans being able to legally watch pay per view matches in the same way those outside the UK already can. Whether this is a good thing or not I will leave to you to decide.
I don’t care where you were born, where you live now, what connection you have or had with West Ham or the East End. As long as you love West Ham and are passionate about the club then you are all part of the West Ham global family in my eyes and no West Ham fan should perceive any status over any other West Ham fan.