We all grew up loving the beautiful game. For me as a child, going to Fulham was cheap as chips. It helped that the Whites were woeful, without any money and on the brink of going bust. But the memories of rattling round what was then the Enclosure with the Junior Black and Whites will last forever. I never imagined I’d see Fulham make the Second Division never mind the top flight and, quite shamefully, I blubbed like a baby when Sean Davis scored at Blackburn and at home to Sheffield Wednesday before bursting into tears at Old Trafford as Louis Saha made Jaap Stam look at mug twice.
There were more tears when we won the battle to go Back to the Cottage, spearheaded by Tom Greatrex. I remember the vitriol that fellow Fulham fans gave people who leafletted outside Loftus Road, suggesting that Mohamed Al-Fayed’s riches meant he had earned the right to do what he wanted at his football club. Boy, that opinion, hasn’t aged well. My older circle of Fulham fans advised me that London’s oldest professional team had a rich history of protest – as Henry Winter outlined when he appeared on The Green Pole podcast and participated in that pitch invasion against Walsall on the day it looked like Fulham Park Rangers was happening.
We face a different threat now. Whatever you may think about Shahid Khan’s failure to fund Marco Silva’s summer shopping spree, the Pakistani-American has been an objectively good owner for the Whites. He has invested huge amounts of money to bankroll the club through the yo-yo period as well as finally build the Riverside Stand. We’ve devoted article after article to the wrongs of Fulham’s ticket pricing, but the American sports model sees supporters as revenue raisers. I happened to be in the States during the Club World Cup when we saw this transactional approach at its finest – with fans for that ridiculous tournament being vastly different prices to sit next to one another. The prices for Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NHL and so many more American sports seem insane, but the suits are supremely confident that they people will pay them, because they do.
The Football Supporters Association are fighting back. Greatrex, formerly chair of Back to the Cottage and the Fulham Supporters’ Trust, is now chair of that body. No stranger to a fight – or the Machiavellian nature of politics – Greatrex gave an interview to the Guardian this summer calling on the football authorities and the incoming football regulator to recognise that matchgoing fans should be recognised. The FSA and its former sister organisation, Supporters Direct, successfully campaigned for the £30 Premier League away cap that now means the top tier’s clubs can only profiteer from home fans.
It is, of course, isn’t just ticket prices. This afternoon’s game against Manchester United, whose leveraged-buyout by the Glazers two decades ago should forever stain the legacy of English football, is one of a record number of matches to be shown by Sky Sports this season. That’s great for the armchair fans, who can settle down on their sofa, see what the VAR controversy is about, and don’t need to be bothered about travelling the length and breadth of the country to watch their team on Friday night, Saturday or Sunday evening or Monday night. There’s no doubt the broadcasters run the game these days, but the strength of their product is ‘the legacy fans’. Mugs like us who pay the ticket prices because we’ve been coming for years and we’d miss it terribly if we didn’t go.
Those ‘legacy fans’ stood up against the European Super League and the absurdity of pay-per-view during the pandemic. They keep the game going week in, week out because when Fulham return to the lowest depths of the pyramid, we’ll still be there. These photo calls, like the one MUST and the Fulham Supporters’ Trust staged at the FA Cup tie when the clubs decided that £66 was an appropriate price for a match switched at short notice at the BBC’s insistence, but they make a difference. Six top flight teams froze their season ticket renewal prices for 2025/26 in response to supporter protests – and it is clear that collective action can make a difference.
As with the massive yellow card protest on one of Manchester United’s previous visits to the Cottage, they also deliver what billionaires detest the most: bad press. Shahid Khan once claimed to the ‘custodian’ of Fulham Football Club. They were fine words, honed by a PR professional, quickly forgotten. To the marketeers and suits who run the game, there aren’t fans at all. Just customers to be fleeced. Mr. Khan, however poorly advised he might be, isn’t the biggest problem. The Premier League cartel is. If you need a sign of where they leads, look at the scenes in the Oval Office last week featuring FIFA’s Gianna Infantino, who got the top job by promising to clean up the game after Sepp Blatter. That went well.
It might seem futile, but fans can fight back. Fulham’s history – from the anti-Bulstrode and Clay days, seeing off Fulham Park Rangers, through to Fulham Park Rangers and Al-Fayed’s Fulham River Projects – shows how. Collaborative campaigning between the ‘legacy fans’ will make the moneymen think again. It’s time to send a message that resonates throughout football. We must stop exploiting loyalty of the fans, who are the lifeblood of the game.
