Liverpool fans are showing us what fan action should look like
Ahead of our Anfield clash, Liverpool fans are mobilising in response to rising ticket prices.
“Sigh - another post about ticket prices”, I hear you groan.
But I’ll keep this one short and to the point. Let me start with this: why oh why is the Fulham Supporters Trust (FST) always afraid to show its teeth in its dealings with the club?
Look at the recent events in Liverpool. The club announced in March that matchday ticket prices will rise for the next three seasons.
In response, Spirit of Shankly (SOS), the club’s official supporters trust, wasted no time in mobilising fans. It’s starting on Saturday, with “Not a pound in the ground”, where they’re calling on fans to spend money with local businesses instead.
It wouldn’t be a ticket pricing article without reminding everyone how small matchday revenue is relative to other areas in a club’s money-making arsenal. Liverpool - one of the biggest clubs in the world with a home ground that holds more than 60,000 people - made £120m from ticket revenue last season. In Sam Eccles’s fantastic article about the Europa Conference League this week, he noted that Spurs made £7m more than that simply for finishing 17th in the Premier League. And that’s before we even talk about TV money.
Raising ticket prices to the levels we see across the Premier League - and hiding behind words like “sustainability”, and pointing the finger at PSR, SCR or whatever other acronym is flavour of the month, is unnecessary, inflammatory, and damaging.
SOS have made it clear that this is the start of a multi-event protest. Their response was swift, but it was their language that really struck me.
“If the club’s owners won’t listen, then we make them.
“This is no longer about consultation. That opportunity has been and gone. This is about action.
"It's about what kind of football club Liverpool chooses to be. One rooted in its people, or one that sees them as a revenue stream to be pushed year after year.”
You can read the full statement here, but it’s a world away from the FST when responding to the club’s numerous controversial moves.
Contrast it to this admittedly erudite but needlessly fluffy open letter to Shahid Khan in 2023. Compare the decisive action taken by SOS to the much-mocked yellow card protest that was described by the Guardian as “the most polite protest ever seen”.
Yes, protests live and die on fan participation, but to mobilise fans you need to inspire them. Anger in reaction to the initial club decision plays a role, but supporter’s trusts also have to whip up sentiment through their words and actions.
We simply don’t see that with the FST.
We got some things wrong with “Stop the Greed” in 2019. But the words that offended some also drove action - the sort we’ve not seen since.
This is despite the club showing at multiple points in the following seven years that it sees the fans as customers, ones who can be swapped out for whoever is willing to pay the prices they set. Even if they support the opposition. The club is emboldened to act this way because we have let it.
Season ticket renewal time is fast approaching - we should know our 2026/27 prices at the end of this month. It could well blow this debate wide open once again and spark renewed calls for action.
If that happens, the FST - and us as fans - must be ready to be as unequivocal and decisive in our response as Liverpool fans have been.
It’s unsustainable for clubs to require so much money to function. The Premier League will eventually produce bland atmospheres and lose the soul that made it attractive in the first place.