Burnley Lose Goodwill After Retainer Row

Burnley FC’s promotion to the Premier League was celebrated to the full in the town itself but also brought a quiet smile to supporters of other clubs like myself as the famous old club defied the odds to stay at the top of the Championship throughout the entire campaign despite a relatively small squad and budget.

It seemed to be a good match of honest, hardworking players and manager together with a loyal, local fanbase and a board of directors cut from the same cloth.

But a week or so of good news has been swiftly outweighed by a torrent of bad press following an announcement about season ticket prices for 2014/15. 12,000+ tickets had already been sold before an early-bird deadline of the end of March and after promotion was secured prices were then increased by up to 50%.

Price rises were perhaps to be expected in line with the Clarets’ new status (although the club is of course in line for a TV windfall estimated at) but a new word in the sale of season tickets has also entered the dictionary with the ‘retainer’, a £100 fee that is paid now but taken off the cost of next season’s ticket with the reasoning behind it perhaps best left to chief executive Lee Hoos.

"We had 5,030 fans who bought season tickets when we were in the Premier League who we haven't seen since. They turned up for one year.

"The idea that came back to us was that we should try and do a two-year season ticket deal. We looked at ways of trying to implement that but it became really complicated because of people changing age categories in the second year.

"We said we'll look around at what other teams are charging in the Premier League and charge that price, but then if someone renews, we'll knock £100 off the price of the renewed season ticket. We thought that wasn't a bad idea.

"What we're saying is stick with us and we'll knock £100 off the following year."

A hastily cobbled together update on the official club website, after the original announcement created a lot of bad feeling and publicity, tried to explain the policy in more detail and rebranded the retainer as a ‘voucher’ but still a voucher that you must pay for now and which will then be taken off your next season ticket.

Leaving aside the now obligatory ‘Twitter Storm’ there has been some fantastic writing on this subject of some of the Burnley supporters’ website with informed and impassioned articles on both Clarets Mad and No Nay Never in the past few days.

The overriding feeling, after the anger has subsided, seems to be one of sadness that a club with such a bank of goodwill has used it up on what seems to be a relatively small number of seats and against the backdrop of a big increase in income for next season.

http://www.clarets-mad.co.uk/

http://nonaynever.net/