Trust Meeting with Vinai Venkatesham
At the beginning of October Trust Board members met with Club Chief Executive Officer, Vinai Venkatesham, as part of the regular cycle of meetings with the Club’s senior executives under the Memorandum of Understanding which governs the Club’s relationship with the Trust. This was the first meeting since the departure of Executive Chairman, Daniel Levy, and consequently the meeting covered the strategy behind changes in the senior management structure and the implications for fan engagement. VV reinforced the importance the new management team places on engagement with the Trust and the FAB and reiterated his intent to attend all meetings with both entities set out in relevant governing documents.
The results of the Trust’s annual fan survey were discussed along with the continuing disappointing scores on performance under the Five Principles. The Club acknowledged the importance of feedback and would engage with the Trust with the aim of making improvements. A further meeting will be held to dive deeper into the survey results.
Other issues raised were the status of Official Supporters’ Clubs as affiliates of the Trust, the ongoing speculation about ownership of the Club in light of unsolicited offers to buy the Club and plans on marking the Club’s heritage. As previously advised to the FAB, VV confirmed that it has commissioned a further mural to go alongside those of Ledley King and Harry Kane and its intent to commission a statue within the stadium footprint (while noting that the process for doing this is a lengthy one). More disappointingly, there are no current plans to create a permanent museum. Next steps on the mural and statue(s) will be presented at the meeting of the FAB in December.
The full minutes of the meeting can be accessed here.
One area that was not discussed was ticketing, a subject of keen interest to the Trust, FAB and supporters generally given recent issues on Ticket Share, concessions, cup pricing, ticketing (loyalty points) and various technical issues that had arisen. Given the importance of these issues, a separate meeting of the joint Trust/FAB/Club working group (TWG) on ticketing had been arranged for the following day and it was agreed to defer discussion on those issues to avoid duplication.
FAB/THST Ticketing Sub-Meetings
Ticketing Working Group
The TWG meeting was supplemented by a further meeting in early November and resulted in progress in a number of areas, but still further work to do in others. Key highlights are as follows:
- Ticket Share – Following work from the FAB and Trust, and feedback from other supporters’ groups, the Club agreed to look again at the policy of restricting Ticket Share to Members. Detailed discussion between the Club, the Trust and the FAB is ongoing and any further developments will be announced by the Club in due course.
- Senior Concessions – The Club, Trust and FAB continue to discuss the availability of senior concessions (SCSTs) within THS. Those discussions remain ongoing and we are unable to report on any meaningful outcome. We will continue to work with the FAB and groups such as Save Our Seniors to seek improvements to the current senior offering. For the avoidance of doubt, the Trust’s formal position remains that the discount should attach to the person, not the seat, and that consequently senior (and other) concessions should be more widely available.
- Members On-Sale Process – The Club presented plans to introduce a new process for the sale of tickets to members with the introduction of a virtual waiting room/randomised queuing system designed to make it fairer for members and more difficult for touts/bots. The virtual waiting room is a temporary online holding area that fans are directed to on the Club website before a high-demand ticket sale begins. The Trust/FAB agreed with the proposal on the basis that it would introduce greater fairness and potentially increase the number of tickets available to genuine members by restricting availability to organised touting operations. This change has now been implemented.
- Technical Problems – A number of technical problems were experienced at the start of the season, primarily concerning operation of the cup guarantee scheme and the calculation of ticketing points. The Club has confirmed that these have been resolved (although non-technical issues remain – see cup guarantee scheme story above). The Trust has urged the Club to provide greater transparency on the calculation of ticketing points to maintain confidence in the process.
- Ticketing Points and Away Ticketing – The Trust/FAB raised the issue of large numbers of no shows of fans allocated away tickets for the Bodo/Glimt and Monaco away matches. The Club confirmed that Ticketing Points are only issued for attendance at cup matches and turnstile data from those matches has been reviewed to identify supporters who did not use their tickets. FAB/Trust raised concerns about supporters booking just to earn Ticketing Points with no intention of attending. The Club will consider introducing spot check ticket collections at upcoming Champions League away matches and may consider additional sanctions if this trend continues. FAB/THST were supportive of this policy.
- Home Cup Match Ticket Pricing – The Trust/FAB raised concerns about home cup ticket pricing and categorisation for Champions League matches. The joint view was that pricing for Villarreal/Doncaster/Copenhagen was too high and had impacted attendance. A £20 adult price was advocated for obviously low demand matches, with concessions for young adults and seniors, noting that there are limited numbers of juniors able to attend on a weeknight. The Club said it will take this feedback away for thought and has subsequently responded by reducing the categorisation from A to B for the Dortmund match in January. We hope it will lead to further more realistic pricing for future home cup games.
Cup Guarantee Scheme
We have received a number of comments from concerned supporters on the implementation of new arrangements for the operation of the Cup Guarantee scheme. Members will remember that the Club had originally proposed to cancel the scheme entirely but after a summer backlash, led by the Trust and involving a large number of fans writing to the Club voicing their concerns, the Club relented, reinstating the scheme but transferring responsibility for ensuring card details remaining up to date to the ST holder participant. A card failure would result in removal from the scheme and the loss of the ten ticketing (loyalty) points awarded for joining the scheme.
The Club had argued that the scheme was being abused by people signing up for the points and then cancelling their card shortly thereafter. The Trust has no issue with measures being taken to tackle such abuse but our concern was that fans genuinely participating in the scheme would fall foul of the new arrangements. We argued that there should be a grace period of one payment failure to accommodate such circumstances but this was not accepted.
After a false start for the Villareal and Doncaster matches (caused by unrelated technical issues), the Club started implementing this policy for the Copenhagen match and our previous fears have come to pass. A number of fans have contacted us, having had their participation in the scheme discontinued and the ten ticketing points withdrawn, after a card payment failure.
It transpires that there are two separate pages within the ticketing pages of the Club’s website: one to manage the cup guarantee scheme within the ‘Ticketing’ menu and another to manage payment details within the ‘Account Management’ menu. Affected fans had renewed details within the latter thinking they were managing the former.
We agree with these fans that the dual management of cards on two separate pages is confusing and have asked the Club to simplify this process – as well as to give the benefit of the doubt to fans, with no prior suspicion of gaming the system, who have attempted to manage their account in good faith. We await a response. In the meantime, we would advise all fans on the Cup Guarantee Scheme to double check their registered card on the ‘Cup Ticket Scheme’ page within the ‘Ticketing’ menu to ensure it is up to date and will not soon expire.
Fan Forum
The THFC Fan Forum took place on 16 October at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Fans who attended heard a question and answer session hosted by Adam Smith with a panel of Beth England, Cristian Romero, Ben Davies, Vinai Venkatesham, Johan Lange, Thomas Frank and Martin Ho.
THST received a limited number of tickets to the event for allocation to Trust members. Thank you to all Trust full members who applied for tickets. The successful applicants were selected by randomised electronic ballot. Thank you to those who attended, asked questions to the panel and chatted to Trust Board members on the night. Commiserations to those who were not successful, we hope that you were able to see the session subsequently online.
We welcome that the Club published a full recording of the event, with no questions or answers removed. Following on from a first half of pre-selected questions, there were questions called from the floor. As the full recording is on-line, we won’t go through all the questions asked, but will highlight a couple. You can watch the full Fan Forum here.
There were questions about the governance and future of the game, in the aftermath of previous attempts to undermine its structures; about the continued level of injuries within the squad; about the transfer window and about the new joint sporting director structure.
Champions League ticket pricing
Of particular significance was the question about ticket pricing, attendances and atmosphere in the stadium, with reference to the specific example of the Villarreal game in the Champions League. Vinai acknowledged the empty seats at the stadium, stated that the Club wants every seat full for every game, recognising how important that is for atmosphere at home games and wanting to have “the stadium rocking”. Vinai assured the forum that the club were looking closely at it, including the extent to which pricing was the issue.
This is an issue which we have repeatedly raised with the Club. As reported in previous newsletters, we have argued that the prices for the group stage matches in this year’s Champions League are too high. This was reflected in the attendance for Villarreal, which in our view was definitely affected by the level of pricing. The same was true for FC Copenhagen this week. We are disappointed that the tickets for Slavia Prague have already gone on sale at the same Category C price as Copenhagen without reviewing the attendance at that game, but we are pleased that the Club has accepted our argument that the proposed Category A pricing for the final home group game against Borussia Dortmund was excessive and that it has now been reduced to Category B.
THST briefing session with young Spurs supporters
We were pleased to be invited to meet with a panel of young Spurs Supporters (aged 11-16) at Lilywhite House last week, as part of the Club’s Fan Engagement Strategy. Our Board member Rachel Martin met with ten young supporters who will be providing regular feedback to the Club, giving a young person’s perspective on a range of issues.
Her brief was to explain the work of the Trust, the Fan Advisory Board, and their remits, how we represent supporter views, the successes we’ve achieved as well as the frustrations. But of course she also wanted to hear their perspectives on matters that directly affected them.
Rachel said: “It was a real joy to meet with such engaging, thoughtful and inspiring young people. It’s so important to listen to young fans and to recognise that they are the future of our great fanbase.”
As one young supporter said: “Players and managers come and go, but fans will always be there.” They should not be taken for granted.
The main takeaways were:
- Not surprisingly the young supporters did not know about the Trust or the FAB but they were very interested in the areas we work on and had loads of great questions.
- Again, understandably, they were surprised by how many areas we worked on with the Club, and they were especially keen to hear about planned statues and murals, making tickets more accessible and increasing crowds at women’s matches.
- Half the group cited Micky Van De Ven as their favourite player, with Bethany England also very popular.
- Ticket pricing was mentioned a lot including the difficulty of getting child prices in the South Stand.
- When asked to guess the results we received for each category in our Five Principles Survey, they were pretty much spot on!
We applaud the Club for setting up this group who will meet three times a year and hope to be further involved with them.
Football Supporters’ Association / Football Supporters Europe
The Trust continues to engage fully in the activity of the FSA and FSE. In conjunction with representatives from other PL clubs the FSA is progressing next steps in the ‘Stop Exploiting Loyalty’ campaign, with it clear that there is rising anger across the league at ever-increasing ticket prices, the erosion of concessions and the dilution of the role of football clubs as representatives of their community. A further meeting is scheduled later this month to take this forward.
Meetings were arranged with FSE (represented amongst others by former Trust Chair, Kat Law) and other PL clubs participating in UEFA football competitions this season to share previous experiences ahead of away European fixtures. While the match against Bodo needed little preparation given how recently we visited Norway, other PL reps provided intelligence ahead of the match against Monaco and which helped inform discussions with the Club and the pre-match briefing sent to supporters. A wash-up with lessons learned from this match is scheduled shortly with the Club and FSE however, apart from the usual but unnecessary irritations experienced by away supporters in Europe, we are not aware of any major concerns that arose.
As an important aside, we are aware that there were significant numbers of no-shows for both the Bodo and Monaco matches. The Trust has urged the Club to take action to ensure that ticket allocations are fully taken up to ensure that fans that are eligible and willing to attend away European matches are able to give the team the support they need and to remove ticketing/loyalty points from those that did not attend the fixture without good reason.
FSE has also provided briefing notes ahead of the next away fixture at PSG and match details will also be shared with the Trust at the meeting with the Club. These will be disseminated to fans successfully allocated a ticket in due course. While restrictions on away fans will not be at Galatasaray levels, it is likely that these will be greater than average for a European fixture. It is noted that, as normal with PSG, the away allocation is less than the expected 5%, and it is a continued source of annoyance that UEFA is seemingly reluctant to enforce this rule.
Fans that attend away European matches are encouraged to complete FSE’s post-match survey. Via this feedback, FSE has been able to address some of the reported issues and promote good practices. The survey can be found here: Away Fans Survey – Football Supporters Europe.
Finally, the Trust welcomes the decision to abandon the proposal to stage a La Liga match between Barcelona and Villareal in Miami in December. The Trust stood alongside supporters from those two clubs and over 400 other European supporters organisations to back an FSE statement condemning plans for extra-territorial matches. The fight now moves on to achieving a similar result for the Juventus-Como league match planned to be held in Australia next year.
Our Campaign to Fill Our Home and Find Our Voice
Earlier this month, the trust launched a new campaign to improve the access and affordability of tickets for your younger fans. The campaign has already been covered by The Sunday Times, the BBC, ESPN, and the Guardian.
“Over the last couple of seasons, it’s undeniable that the atmosphere has declined at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The reasons are simple: too many empty seats and too many supporters, particularly young supporters, priced out of attending. Thin the crowd and you thin the noise.”
The Trust is asking the Club to make the following changes to ensure we’re welcoming the next generation of fans and filling our home:
- Cheaper match ticket pricing, particularly for midweek home cup ties
- Extend the Young Adult (YA) category to 18–25.
- Young Adult concessions for all matches.
- Concessions throughout the South Stand for all Children and Young Adults, for every match.
- Young Adult tickets to be available on the Ticket Exchange.
- Opt-in for season-ticket holders to allow their seats to be resold at the relevant concession rate (so empty seats become affordable seats).
The next stage of our campaign will be to promote supporter stories of being priced out of attending home matches and the impact this is having on the atmosphere at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Stay tuned!