Season ticket sales have hit an all-time high at Aston Villa and have been capped at 30,000. The club has, for the first time in its history, introduced a waiting list. Heady, intoxicating days.
The club is experiencing astonishing times as the claret-and-blue faithful have thrown full support behind the management of Dean Smith and the vision of Wes Edens, Nassef Sawiris, José Pitarch and Christian Purslow.
It goes without saying that there is nothing better than a rocking Villa Park at full capacity (ideally under floodlights), and the sense of expectation since our promotion back to the Premier League has rocketed to levels unprecedented in recent memory. A frenzied summer of transfer activity has revolutionised the Villa squad as they prepare for life back at the top of the English game.
Amid the euphoria and dizzying sense of anticipation for the season ahead, a darker story has emerged, of which many readers may already be aware. Changes in Premier League broadcasting regulations mean that an increased area adjacent to the dugouts needs to be boxed-off for the broadcasters and numerous others of dubious necessity and importance.
The Premier League has, not for the first time, been seduced by the Dark Side.
The last time we were in the Premier League only a couple of seats were set aside, but this time around, they are now claiming a whole row, displacing a number of fans from seats they’ve occupied for, in some cases, over twenty years.
Notable among them is our very own Jonathan Fear and his father, who have occupied their seats on the front row of C5 block since before the Trinity Road stand was rebuilt. This development is a doubly bitter pill because they’d already renewed their season tickets long before being told they would be forced to relocate.
The club offered seats as near as possible to their current location. Fair enough, you might think. What’s the problem? But that is to miss the point. Notwithstanding the physical reasons the seat was completely appropriate (extra leg room to suit mobility issues, for instance), over 20 years in the same seat had fostered a community.
Relationships had been forged, with fellow fans and stewards in the vicinity. Everyone knew each other, exchanged stories, shared empathies. Fellow fans, stewards, even some press would frequently stop by on match days – it was ‘home from home’ for the Fears and their friends. Forcing fans, REAL fans, to move from their chosen, cherished vantage points – why?
Of course, broadcasters and officials want, perhaps even need, to be close to the action. Getting word of an impending substitution or tactical change, ahead of everyone else, to feed back to the commentary team would be huge. It would give an edge and insight not available elsewhere.
But at what cost? Fans are the lifeblood of the game, a platitude trotted out all too often in modern football, but no less relevant nor appropriate for that.
As small-scale as this issue might appear, uprooting fans from seats purchased in good faith (ahead of the playoff victory which, to coin a phrase, moved the goalposts) to accommodate fly-by-night chancers, many of whom will decline to take advantage of the proximity to the real action, leaves a very bitter taste.
Aston Villa, in common with most elite level sports organisations, offer the media a superb environment in which to operate – the location of the press box and facilities available are first-class. There is no clear and obvious reason (we might get used to that terminology ahead of VAR this season!) why the Premier League should deem it necessary to commandeer such a sizeable area adjacent to the dugouts for further media intrusion.
It is important to reiterate that the decision to relocate the fans in this area was not made by Aston Villa. To be fair to the club, fans affected by these bizarre and arbitrary regulations were offered seats in areas as near as possible to the originals.
But again, this misses the point entirely. We all know that TV money rules modern football, and nothing hammers this home more than fans being kicked out of their seats to make way for the off-chance (for it is no more than that) that broadcasting lackeys will pour into the area next to Dean Smith in search of a ‘scoop’ few care about.
Focusing on @The Fear for a moment, he declined the club’s offer to move his season tickets across the aisle. Numerous and significant health issues (detailed in his new book, Fear Conquers All) mean his location offered a physical environment suited to his needs – what was offered did not offer the equivalent.
Having discussed the situation at length with JF, it’s important to emphasise that he was not looking for any preferential treatment: he simply did not want to relocate his seat. Never mind the extra leg room which suited his physical considerations, his seat was fully exposed to the elements and he ‘enjoyed’ a restricted view, one he wouldn’t change for anything.
He mentioned that the broadcasters for whom these seats have been made available seldom made use of them anyway in years gone by, so quite why they need even more seating to leave mostly unoccupied defies sense.
Perhaps the overriding issue at hand is a matter of principle – JF felt he was being bullied into moving from his unique vantage point, so close as it is to the action on the pitch and the players and coaches in the dugout.
The dismay is evident and it goes without saying that the matchday experience of those left in the lower C5 without the witty banter and searing match analysis of JF will be all the poorer.
But if football is to sell out, then so will JF, who has decided to spend the coming season in corporate in the 82 Restaurant before reassessing next summer. This could prove to be JF’s final season after some 40 years’ attendance broken only by his medical issues as detailed in the book.
The Premier League’s excessive fawning over and pandering to their broadcast paymasters gets more sickening every time the TV rights are renegotiated, with less and less regard given to the fans who make it the spectacle it is. In an ideal world, fans would simply turn their backs on this kind of behaviour and vote with their feet.
But the trouble is, it’s in our blood and most of us just couldn’t bear to miss out on the chance to see our boys in action, and to offer the tremendous support we always display. Times change, sometimes for the better, but usually for the worse and the game we know and love dies just a little bit more on each occasion.
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