Tim Gibbs
Sitting at the Hull FA Cup 3rd Round game recently brought home something that had been on my mind for a while. I know it was a 5.30 Sunday Kick Off, and people were maybe trying to get the last bit of joy from the Xmas holidays, but all around my seat were empty rows, and never seen before faces contributing to a flat atmosphere that was by no means a new experience. It really occurred to me how much the Season Ticket holders who I’ve sat with for the past 19 years have changed, and how rapid that change has been since the move to the E******s. At that moment the change certainly did not feel for the better, and it seems if Arsenal are not careful, a large number of regular attendees will be lost for good, and with ticket prices freezing out younger fans (the average age of a Premier League ST holder is 41) I’m not sure whether it can be recovered. While eventually we all will move on and someone else will take our place, this sense of creating a permanent block of people who underpin the fanbase and create a shared memory is being eroded season after season.
Just to mention I am first and foremost not passing judgement or criticism of any fans who go or don’t go to games, or suggesting I personally am in some ways a “better” Arsenal fan than anyone else because I have been an ST holder for a certain amount of time. This is a just a personal observation about what I’ve felt to be a changing situation among fans going to the home games in the last 19 years of being privileged enough to see AFC, and I would welcome all thoughts and opinions from other fans’ perspectives on the shifting sands of the ST fanbase. People stop going for all sorts of reasons and I’m not blaming anyone for making the decision to not attend - finance, moving jobs/homes, kids, losing interest, anti-modern football, anti-Wenger etc all play their part. I’ve been lucky enough to live and work in London, and to have an Arsenal supporting wife and a dad who still loves to go to every game and can afford to go.
My dad and I got our season ticket for the West Lower in 1996, just before the Wenger revolution began, and he amazingly had a choice of where to sit as Rioch’s fare the previous season wasn’t creating much of a waiting list! As anyone there would say, and Amy Lawrence’s Invincibles book brings it all back, it was a special time. But what made it so special was the people around us. You saw these people once, twice a week, sometimes more than your own friends and family. For some it became a strong bond, we became very good friends with some of those who sat with us beyond the football, getting to know them very well and going to weddings, christenings, birthdays together. But it was also the characters, every block had them – the latecomers, the shouters, the swearers, the jokers, the ones who went to the toilet five times a half, the one with the crazy laugh, the statto who could tell you who scored what when in a League Cup match in 1967. And everyone turned up week in week out, you had your block in-jokes which didn’t make sense to anyone else and it became a part of it all as much as Bergkamp, Henry etc tearing up the pitch. And every part of the ground had their own thing going on.
Without hopefully putting everything down to nostalgia, leaving Highbury was a big wrench, and of course it was going to change to some degree. Arsenal offered a chance for ST holders to move together and sit in the same block to recreate some of what was going to be lost, and we moved with a few others to the new stadium. With 20,000 extra people attending there was going to be some difference, but it didn’t take long for change to happen. You could put this down to a lack of success compared to Highbury perhaps, however, the change began within a couple of years. Instead of the new attendees who had been waiting for a long time to see Arsenal bringing a new drive and enthusiasm and a new investment into the fan base to go with those who had been at Highbury for years, within two or three years, the “new” regulars were changing, regularly. Quite a few seats had a different person every week, people who had been there for one or two years suddenly upped and left. Now after eight years at the E******s the people we used to go to Highbury with, and others who were long term ST holders from other parts of Highbury have either turned in their ticket, or are not attending games anymore. That is the aspect which is most troubling, that people with STs don’t attend and leave the seats empty. I guess they won’t renew when the season ends, but its a troubling development over the last couple of years. New people will take their place, and maybe they will stay on, but it doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment.
In any ST issue, the waiting list looms large, as there seems to be an endless supply of people happy to take over from anyone who leaves, and perhaps they can go on to create their own groups and memories in the crowd, but from my personal observation it seems that more and more people who spend all that time waiting for a prized ticket only stick it out for a couple of years and then move on. Maybe they find the moaning and groaning jaded cynicism of regular fans wears them down, but it leads to a constantly unsettling pattern where a lot of the people around you have never been seen before, and probably never will again. There are still some characters and regulars there and new friendships and shared experiences can be formed – moving from Highbury I was instantly struck by the bloke who starts the chants but gets carried away and runs down the steps screaming and waving his arms about, the guy who looks like Father Christmas, the one with a strong hatred of Per Mertesacker, the one who brings sandwiches and a tea flask (and sometimes a packet of bourbons). They are still hanging in there, but they are diminished, and the fabric of the fanbase feels frayed. With that seeming to break down as people who have been going for many years stop attending, and are replaced by either empty seats or a constantly revolving group of corporate invites, tourists, one time a year fans or friends and relatives attending a handful of games a year, it can only impact on the core of the stadium. A rootless and irregular procession of faces here one game gone the next, with little shared experience to hold on to, leading only to a rootless and irregular atmosphere.
With the erosion of terrace culture, all seater stadia and the like, the regular ST holders are among the last grouping of fans who can still breath life, shared history and traditions into a club’s support. I can see how this can sound like I’m suggesting going to Arsenal should be like an exclusive membership club, or perhaps I’m just having a nostalgia trip longing for past days. I’m not at all, there should always be room for people to come to the odd game if they can. Perhaps its just I’m sitting in the wrong seats! It is indeed worrying that very few young people get to see Arsenal regularly anymore, but of those that do, barring a few exceptions I haven’t noticed many “new” ST holders staying beyond one or two years max, or even attending regularly and involving themselves in the matchday moments or creating their own groups. That will affect all Premier League clubs eventually as even “young” 30 something regulars like myself give up the ghost. Any home attending fanbase needs the underpinning of the core group of season ticket holders and it is they along with a harder core within those who go home and away who are the bedrock of support, cultural experience and shared memory. They also provide a potentially crucial coherent voice of dissent. If all of that is on shaky foundations it can all come crashing down. Whether changing the manager, or reducing the prices, flexible season tickets or anything else will either happen or indeed work to keep hold of that core is the key, and one can only hope the rot stops before it is way, way too late, and we all just become a nomadic Red Army.
