The past few days has seen Manchester United fans outraged by the rise in ticket prices at Old Trafford.
When Ineos took charge of the footballing side of Manchester United, many assumed that Sir Jim Ratcliffe would bring Manchester back into the club.
The man born in Failsworth, only around seven and a half miles from Old Trafford, is a boyhood fan and therefore it was assumed he would make decisions for the good of the United supporters.
Since arriving though, Ineos have been ruthlessly cost-cutting with Sir Alex Ferguson among those affected. Along with this, Ineos spent £10m to sack 250 members of staff earlier this year.
Now, fans have been left furious over the decision to raise ticket prices for supporters.
Ineos’ scandalous decision is rightly slammed
United announced earlier this week their ticket pricing increases which now sees every ticket cost £66, regardless of age or seat.
This prompted the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) to send CEO Omar Berrada a letter brandishing the decision as a “disgrace”.
The decision is one which will reflect badly on Ineos and TBR’s finance expert Adam Williams has made this clear.
“Season tickets account for about 50,000 of Old Trafford’s 75,000 capacity, so this is affecting the remaining 25,000, minus the away section where there is a ticket price cap for Premier League games.
“Once you’ve taken off the hospitality section as well, you find that this doesn’t necessarily affect that many seats.
“To me, that just makes it all the more scandalous that Ineos and Ratcliffe are hiking prices when it will only increase their matchday income by a fraction, especially when you consider that the vast majority of tickets for the season have already been sold.
“But the self-professed calling card of this regime so far has been to find ‘efficiencies’ no matter how small and maximise revenue at every opportunity.”
How Manchester United could solve fan ticket anger
Ineos’ budget cutting will likely impact the first team with PSR concerns, however, should the responsibility fall onto the fanbase when the club have wasted so much cash?
“I think United are pretty close to the wire in terms of PSR, particularly in terms of UEFA’s system, and I think this is indicative of the fact that they may be recalibrating on that basis.
“However, fans are entitled to ask why they should be the ones to take the hit when the owners themselves have bungled some really big decisions already in their tenure.
“It has cost more than £20m to replace Erik ten Hag with Ruben Amorim and that is a mess entirely of their own making. They have also spent almost £10m to make hundreds of staff redundant, many from the local area.
“For a man who professes to have been a bedrock United supporter since he was a boy, these kinds of measures are incredibly hard to justify.”
Fans who are left in a cost-of-living crisis however are now being asked by Ineos to pick up the bill, which could actually be solved if United sold one squad player.
“In the case of the ticket price rises, the same financial effect could be made by selling one fringe squad player.”
This all makes it pretty difficult for Ratcliffe to justify and with protests now expected this weekend, perhaps Ineos will be having second thoughts.
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