Liverpool v Crystal Palace Ticket Price Yellow Card Protest a Success | OneFootball

For all of their faults, Fenway Sports Group have been great at realising when they’ve made a mistake and have backed down. When they wanted to put the ticket prices up in 2016, resulting in a protest in the form of a walkout on 77 minutes, John Henry and co issued an open letter and they didn’t raise prices.

When the club was involved in the ill-fated European Super League, which no one was in favour of, John Henry filmed an apology video and the club backed away from the ESL. The hope is that the protest against Crystal Palace this weekend will result in a similar reversal of opinion. I’m just not sure we should hold our breath.

Yellow Card For FSG

A protest against the plan to raise ticket prices for three consecutive years took place 13 minutes into the match against Crystal Palace on Saturday. Before the match, Spirit of Shankly and others organised the handing out of ‘yellow cards’ that had a picture of John Henry with his fingers in his ears, along with the words ‘CAUTION: Anfield’s Soul at Risk’ on the front, all bordered by the words ‘Not a Pound in the Ground’. When the 13th minute ticked around, what looked like the vast majority of Anfield showed the owners the yellow card.

With such a huge number of people joining in, including some Palace fans in a show of solidarity, there can be no doubt that this isn’t just the small number of people who care about it, as suggested by a letter from Billy Hogan to Liverpool Members and Season Ticket holders. The owners cannot hide behind the idea of it being a small group of troublemakers who have been rabble-rousing in the weeks since the ticket price increases were announced. Too many people have shown them the yellow card.

More Protests Likely

If the owners think that the show of force during the Crystal Palace match is where the protests will end, they haven’t been paying attention during their stewardship of the club. People are angry that a group of owners who are collectively worth billions of pounds are telling us that we have to pay more for the privilege of watching our football club. Liverpool belongs to the people of the city first and foremost, with fans from further afield coming next and American hedge fund billionaires only on the list to ‘sign the cheques’, as Bill Shankly once said.

The problem that FSG have got is that the majority of the supporters of this club believe in the idea of looking out for others and of the football club leading the way over difficult conversations. Tickets for matches are already too expensive, so we should be front and centre of the conversation about lowering them across the board, not raising them even further. That the Reds are the first club to lock in price rises for three years is a stain on the ownership that has otherwise been largely excellent. The protests won’t stop here.