Short selling

Adam Powley wonders if Tottenham Hostpur could be selling their fans short by not taking up full allocations

It's a conspiracy theorist’s dream – not quite on a par with the Kennedy assassination, but of concern to football fans all the same. Tottenham had been accused of deliberately denying their supporters the chance to buy tickets for away games in order to force them to attend live screenings of the matches at Spurs, a serious accusation which required some clear answers. Getting them, however, proved to be a shade tricky.

The issue revolves around the transmission of games to White Hart Lane. The screenings, accompanied by commentary from Cap­ital Gold radio, are hugely popular. Sitting in a stadium watching a huge TV while listening to Jonathan Pearce shouting is a surreal experience, but that hasn’t deterred thousands from paying £8 for adults or £4 for senior citizens and kids. Indeed, supporters like it so much that for the recent Arsenal match over 8,000 went to the Lane. Because of safety reg­ulations, thousands were turned away.

The scheme is not without its critics how­ever, particularly over December’s match at Chel­sea. Tottenham were accused of not tak­ing up their full entitlement of away tickets in order to maximise attendance at the screening. With the visiting club receiving no rev­enue from gate receipts, Spurs can instead earn well in excess of £50,000 from their own arrangements.

According to the White Hart Lane ticket office, Chelsea required final confirmation of how many tickets Tottenham wanted six weeks in advance of the game To this end, Spurs advertised availability in September and supporters had to apply by November the 9th so that the club could evaluate demand. The allocation was to be advised: in reality Spurs had a provisional quota of 1,411 tickets with an option for a further 1,576.

By the closing date, Tottenham had rec­eived a total of 1,617 applications. The ticket office spokesperson said that this reflected “poor response from Tottenham’s core supp­ort”, meaning that 16,000 season ticket-holders and around 30,000 members had the option of applying, but only a fraction had responded. If committed fans didn’t want to attend the game, the club reasoned, it was unlikely that “ordinary” fans would take up any surplus.

That’s open to question, but it still leaves just over 200 disappointed supporters with­out tickets. Couldn’t Spurs simply ask for a couple of hundred more? The problem, it transpires, is with Chelsea. According to Spurs, “the way Chelsea do their away allocation is that you have to take all or nothing, you cannot return the tickets you do not sell”.

In short if Spurs had taken the extra allocation they feel they would have been left with well over a thousand tickets for general sale that would not be bought. In addition, Spurs said they intended to screen the game regardless of how many tickets were sold.

Cynics would say all this provides the club with a convenient excuse. Rumours suggest that Spurs’ experiment is all to do with that familiar spectre, pay-per-view TV. It’s said that Tottenham are using the success of the screenings to convince the City that a dedicated digital TV channel is a viable proposition. It could be the thin end of the wedge- the logical next step is to ban away supporters altogether.

From WSC 143 January 1999. What was happening this month