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Just what was it with the home game against Manchester City that had the PR team at West Ham hell bent on making it a complete disaster?

Weeks before the game we were told that we shouldn’t pass up the chance to watch “City’s Superstars” and to buy tickets for £50. If the price wasn’t disgraceful enough, the attempt to market the game around our opposition rather than our own ‘superstars’ was, quite possibly, the biggest PR fail in the history of PR fails. Just why on earth would we, as passionate and committed West Ham fans, want to pay £50 to watch the opposition at Upton Park?

The club quite rightly made a u-turn and began marketing tickets for the game around our own players, but the damage appeared to have already been done.

That was in the shape of several hundred empty seats remaining for the televised game. Obviously the club can’t be seen to have empty seats at the Boleyn Ground when they’ve insisted for years that they’ll have no problem with filling the 54,000 seater Olympic Stadium when they move in. That would be a disaster.

However, that sounds insignificant to insulting their own fans by offering £5 tickets to members of the local community. Members of the local community who do NOT support West Ham. Members of the local community who were evidently laughing at the club’s fans during their 3-1 loss on Saturday evening.

The club takes pride in its work in the community, and rightly so. It’s community work that plays a big part in the move the Olympic  Stadium in three years. But if making football affordable to members of the community means giving supporters of other clubs tickets to home games for just £5, then us life-long supporters should have cause for concern.

Video footage and witness accounts from fans at the City game show a group of muslims praying in the Sir Trevor Brooking stand ten minutes before the end of the first-half. Some comments under some articles claim some of the men praying were also seen at their seats quite clearly cheering on Manchester City and disrespecting West Ham supporters.

The issue for me is not the muslims being able to pray at a football stadium, nor is it the fact they are muslim, but the fact that the club sold VERY CHEAP tickets to supporters of other football clubs (if any at all), solely to fill the stadium.

The opportunity to watch Premier League football and, evidently, City’s Superstars, for a fiver, would have been too good to turn down for anyone, and you can’t really blame them.

The aftermath is something the club didn’t really think through, though. The video going around of West Ham fans standing around in disbelief as the men said their prayers at Upton Park on Saturday makes the fans look like “West Ham thugs”, as one commenter said under an article on the Daily Express website.

But these fans were not hounding the religious ritual that was happening in front of them, they were more likely to be protesting against the club’s decision to sell tickets to those men who had no intention of supporting West Ham, let along watch the game. This ultimately puts the club’s supporters in a bad light once again, so soon after getting over the incident at White Hart Lane last season.

This latest PR fail from the club joins a long list of mistakes. The decision to allow a child (David Sullivan’s son) to make official announcements via Twitter is, quite frankly, an embarrassment, while the aforementioned decision to market a game at the Boleyn Ground around West Ham’s opposition was an insult.

How many more before it gives real supporters of West Ham no choice but to stay away? After all, there are thousands of supporters who have since voiced their anger and concern underneath online news articles, in forums and on social media.

The bottom line is that the club made thousands of true supporters pay £50 for a game to watch the oppositions ‘superstars’ and then offered supporters of other clubs a 90% discount.

That is unacceptable, regardless of the club’s ‘good intentions’ from the beginning.



9 COMMENTS

  1. JJ, I owe you an apology. I really thought this was you creating a storm in a tea-cup. Turns out I couldn’t be more wrong. You were just ahead of most bloggers and pundits in commenting on it. Goes to show how much I know.
    It’s official: you’re not whiney and I’m a wally. Cheers fella.

  2. I’d like to point out that I am not arguing, I’m just defending my own point of view. You challenged it and I responded.

    I agree with you that the club has a responsibility to the borough of Newham, but there are ways and means of going about that without insulting the club’s lifelong supporters.

    I don’t think you can claim that my point of view is “cobblers” either. I am not the only one who thinks the same, while you are of a about five or six fans who have dismissed my view as “cobblers.”

    There are no doubt more who share your point of view, but from the many fans I’ve directly spoken to, I get the idea this is not just a way of causing “unnecessary grief and harm to the clubs public image as a cheap way to score points for self-aggrandisement.”

    Finally, this is probably the first article I have written that is in any way ‘negative.’ I have always been supportive of the board, the managers and the OS move. I feel we are in a good place both on and off the pitch. But I wanted to publish my disagreement with the way the club had handled recent events. You may (or may not) agree with it, but I do.

    PS. I am probably quite whiney, but only when there’s something I disagree with.

  3. Oh blimey. Alright lets answer this and put it to bed.

    Para 1. Your post DOES come across as whiney.

    Para 2. Congrats, you support West Ham, finest club in the world. Do you often post purely positive, ‘supportive’ articles? Or do you just get more mileage out of being needlessly ‘contentious’?

    Para 3. Didn’t miss your point. Read it, understood it and correctly called it cobblers.

    Para 4. I’m a lifelong fan who can’t afford to go to any games at the moment, so I’m one of those thousands who are terribly insulted. ‘Cept I’m not and neither are most of us who appreciate that not only do the owners have a responsibility to the community of Newham as the Borough’s club because of the move to the OS, but have always had a responsibility to the local community. We aren’t going to grow all that many new fans in Manchester. P’raps you think we’ll fill the OS with just your ego, but large as that is, I reckon it’ll take a bit more.

    On the specific point of the Muslims you’ve mentioned: I reckon there were about 20 in that video (Seem about right?). All you can point to as evidence for your opinion and I quote is,

    “SOME comments under SOME articles Claim that SOME of the men praying were also seen at their seats quite clearly cheering on Manchester City and disrespecting West Ham supporters”.

    Well that’s conclusive. Even if it’s true, how many is SOME, out of 20 or 30. F**k me it’s a revolution. Real Hammers should weep.

    Para 5. All of a sudden your evidence (spurious at best) has gone from SOME of 20-30, to “thousands”. I always enjoy a balanced view.

    Oh yeah, Para 6 (My favourite). When there’s something seriously wrong with their club, REAL fans stand up and are counted. I have and I do. What they don’t do is try to cause unnecessary grief and harm to the clubs public image as a cheap way to score points for self-aggrandisement. You want to write? Go ahead. But if you’re going to argue, ending with ‘No, you are’ like the playground response is seriously lame.

    PS. You are a bit whiney. 🙂

  4. So, by not agreeing with the way the club went about trying to fill the Boleyn for the City game, I’m whining, whinging and a Spud fan?

    Firstly, I am NOT a Spud fan. I would have thought that was quite obvious given that I’m writing on a West Ham website which, I’d like to add, I founded and continue to spend money and a lot of my time on in order to keep it running for fans to debate contentious issues such as this one.

    Secondly, you appear to have missed the point of my post all together. The issue, just as I quite clearly state, is not the fact that group at prayer were actually praying, more the fact that they were in the ground in the first place. They were not West Ham fans, nor were they remotely interested in supporting West Ham. I don’t blame them for taking up the offer of a £5 ticket to see Premier League football, though. I would’ve done the same.

    The club insulted the thousands of fans who cannot afford to go to see West Ham these days by selling those tickets at that price and to non-West Ham supporters.

    With all that and the post above in mind, I ask you this: Is that what it’s going to be like in the Olympic Stadium? Would you be happy about that? Knowing there were thousands of supporters who have paid 10x less than the real fans, sitting with the real fans, but still supporting the away team?

    If you’re a real fan you wouldn’t be. Unless you’re the Spurs supporter?

  5. Ok the ‘Man citeh superstars’ thing was a stupid mistake. Nobody would argue that point. However the rest of this post is just the usual whining and whinging for no good reason. Also the very idea that the fans who saw that group at prayer were upset because they had been given cheap tickets is total cobblers.

    Yes the fans started shouting ‘Irons’ to disturb the prayer meeting, but while whether it’s appropriate to have such a meeting in a walkway, in a football club, on a matchday is up for debate, chanting ‘Irons’ on such an occasion certainly isn’t. Those few fans may have been disrespectful, but there’s no way that was ‘abuse’.
    Oh yeah, and love the way this post states, ‘This latest PR fail from the club joins a long list of mistakes’. Then goes on to list just ONE; the matter of Jack Sullivan’s tweets. Whether you approve (many do) or disapprove, it’s hardly the end of the world. Are you a spud fan?

  6. The club is not being run badly, Peter Iron. I believe the club is being run pretty damn well considering the state of affairs we were in ten or so years ago. We’re improving financially and, as a result, are improving on the pitch too (most of the time).

    I have always supported the way Gold and Sullivan have gone about their business at the club, and I will always be thankful for the way they saved us from administration. I’d like to point out that the above article is not a direct attack at the way the club is being run, but of the decisions it has recently made regarding the sale of tickets in an attempt to fill the stadium.

    The club’s recent PR blunders should not go unnoticed, or even praised. Are you saying that it’s right that the club sold £5 tickets to people in Newham who were NOT West Ham supporters, while loyal and passionate fans had been priced out by £50 tickets?

    Do you agree with the way the club began marketing the game around CITY’S players rather than our own? If that’s your cup of tea then maybe it’s you who should “bog off” and support the likes of United and City.

  7. That’s right , the club is run so badly they may as well padlock the gates to the ground and dissolve the club and give the O.C stadium to spurs or leyton orient .
    Thankfully most of the fans aren’t nit pickers like you ! If you don’t like the way the club is going then bog off!!

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