HISTORY OF THE TRUST

A Brief History of the Bantams Supporters Trust

Over the last twenty years or so, many devoted Bradford City fans have worked hard to develop supporter representation at Valley Parade. The basic idea is that fans are so important to City, and City is so important to fans, that the fans deserve a say in the workings of the club. But it has not always been plain sailing to implement this essential idea.

The Birth of the Trust: the First Administration

The origins of BST lie in Bradford City’s financial crisis of 2002, when it became clear that the then-Chairman, Geoffrey Richmond – who owned 98% of the Club’s shares – had mismanaged the finances when City experienced the dizzy heights of Premiership football.

Signing ‘star’ players on exorbitant wage contracts proved to be a millstone around the Club’s neck and when ITV Digital collapsed, plunging the Football League into crisis, it was revealed that Richmond had run up debts of £36 million. This was the last straw for City fans. Geoffrey Richmond rapidly became the most unpopular chairman at the Club and staged an inevitable – though initially reluctant – exit. The accountancy firm of Kroll, Buchler and Phillips were drafted in from Leeds, and Bradford City was placed into Administration on 16 May 2002. The Rhodes family – who had been involved as investors since 1997 – were then joined by Yorkshire theme-park owner Gordon Gibb in a desperate bid to keep Bradford City afloat, and to satisfy all the stakeholders in time for the start of the next season, less than three months away. They succeeded in the necessary financial restructuring by the skin of their teeth, and the club emerged to begin the 2002/3 season in (the then) Division One, with a new Chairman, Gordon Gibb, who had bought the stadium at Valley Parade, a settlement with the Professional Footballer’s Association over players’ wages, and debts reduced to a mere £2.7 million, according to the Guardian newspaper 29 Nov 2002. City did not incur any points’ deduction from going into administration, because such penalties were only introduced later, as the FA’s disciplinary response to Bradford’s actions.

In the year 2002, a public Fans’ Forum at Bradford Playhouse was organised, chaired by David Pendleton, with speaker, Simon Binns of Supporters Direct, to talk about the Supporters Trust movement. With few Bantams’ fans needing to be persuaded in favour of the new ideas that were spreading nationally about the enhanced role football supporters could and should play in protecting and developing their clubs, the Trust was formed. The Trust took over the representative role of the former Official Supporters Club (OSC), and it’s Chair, Mark Neale, sportingly stood down in order to make way for the new organisation.

The second Administration: the Trust saves the day

The importance of fans’ representation was driven home even more forcefully less than two years later. By early 2004 it had become apparent that the money was drying up. It was proving almost impossible to service the debts and to keep the Club playing in Division One at the same time. The strains led to a fall-out between Gordon Gibb and the Rhodes family. Mr Gibb resigned as Chair, to be replaced by Julian Rhodes; Messrs. Kroll arrived once more from Leeds, and the Club entered a second period of Administration on February 27^th. 2004. Bradford City, an integral part of the lives of so many, was once more in danger of going out of business. Throughout the Spring and Summer of 2004, the club remained perilously close to extinction, and the finances were not secured finally until December 2004.

Legal and financial deadlines came, and were just met; players were sold, major creditors faced down, and still the future of the club hung in the balance ... It was at this point that the Supporters Trust took the initiative. A vigil at Valley Parade was organised for May 13^th. 2004. Eight hundred fans gathered on what was thought to be the last night in the club’s history. The message was stark: ‘raise £100,000 in six weeks and the club would have a fighting chance of making it through the summer.’ The next day the Bradford Telegraph & Argus (T&A) joined in, with its Save Our City appeal. The combined target rose to £250,000, which Julian Rhodes promised to match from his own funds. In the words of the club’s historians:

“The Trust’s hardcore of volunteers, fronted by chairman Mark Boocock and vice chairman Phillip Marshall, suddenly found themselves in charge of a major fundraising drive. Margaret Hainsworth, the Trust’s secretary, devoted herself to the cause, collecting and banking scores if not hundreds of cheques every day.”

David Markham and Lindsay Sutton, The Bradford City Story: The Pain and the Glory

The campaign saw thousands of people in the footballing community organise fund-raising, from school children and fans auctioning off their treasured collectors’ items to local business leaders throwing their weight behind the Club. The mood was summed up by the well-known Bradford journalist Jim Greenhalf, writing in the T&A on May 28th:

“For many, Bradford City is a symbol of hope in the future of the City. The Club is everything to them. The very bricks and stones, the floodlights, the way the sky changes above the ground as the season change, speaks to them personally.”

The campaign culminated in an all-star pro-celebrity fund-raising match that drew 10,000 spectators to an emotional occasion at Valley Parade on May 30th. By the end of the summer, the £250,000 target had been smashed, the club had been saved, and it was left to Julian Rhodes to complete the difficult negotiations with the outstanding creditors.

This fund-raising effort was the greatest undertaken by any football fans on behalf of their club up to that time. It was important not just in financial terms, but for the message it sent about the club’s deep significance to the people of Bradford. And the survival of Bradford City as a club hinged on the Trust’s initiative in the midst of the crisis – without the Trust, the club might not exist today. 

A mixed picture on the pitch

Following the relegation from the Premier League in 2000-2001, and then from the old Division One in 2003-4, Bradford City spent three seasons in the third tier of English football, which had been renamed League One after the inauguration of the Championship as the second-tier competition in 2004-5. City finished in 11^th place in its first two seasons in League One, before being relegated again in 2006-7.

The club spent the next six seasons in League Two, finishing in places 10, 9, 14, 18 and 18, before its fortunes revived in the ‘history-makers’ season of 2012-13 with a finish in 7th place, and a successful play-off campaign culminating in a famous Wembley victory, 3-0 against Northampton Town.

The return to League One lasted just five seasons, however, with finishes in places 11,7,5,5 and 11, before relegation to League Two occurred once more in season 2018-19, where the Bantams have remained to date. The tenure in League One was punctuated by two play-off campaigns, which led to a Semi-Final defeat by Millwall in 2015-16, and an even more harrowing defeat a year later at the hands of Millwall (again) in the play-off Final at Wembley in May 2017. City had come agonizingly close to a promotion that would have taken the club back to the second tier for the first time since 2003. But as it was, the Bantams had suffered four relegations and one promotion since the Premiership days of 2000-2001.

Although this mixed record on the pitch has taken the Bantams down from the first tier to the fourth tier of English football, the club has retained a fan base whose exceptional loyalty makes Bradford City consistently the best supported club in League Two, with attendances at Valley Parade averaging, 15,450, well over more than 5,000 above its nearest challengers. There is no doubt that City retains its status as a ‘big club’.

A long roster of managers

The mixture of managers in the post-Premiership era reflects the mixed experience on the pitch: City have changed managers more than once a year on average. The club have tended to alternate between celebrity-player managers – Bryan Robson, Colin Todd and, most recently, Mark Hughes – and those with solid professional experience of management in the lower divisions – Peter Taylor, Phil Parkinson, Simon Grayson, Gary Bowyer and Derek Adams. But the managerial roster also includes some legendary former players – Stuart McCall, Peter Jackson and David Hopkin – and even an experiment with untried youth – Mark Trueman and Conor Sellars.

Stuart McCall is the longest serving of these managers, with three spells in the job (plus a fortnight as caretaker in the year 2000) during six seasons in all. He first appeared as a likely managerial appointment at a charity match at the Oakwell ground, Barnsley, organized jointly by the Barnsley and Bradford Supporters Trusts in May 2007, to commemorate the 10^th Anniversary of Barnsley’s promotion to the Premiership, via their 2-0 defeat of the Bantams in 1997. City’s squad at the charity match included Wayne Jacobs, Cec Pod, Peter Jackson and Terry Dolan alongside McCall, and introduced Mark Lawn, who would become a co-owner of the club, and David Baldwin, who went on to become the club’s Chief Operating Officer. The match was also refereed by Howard Webb, who went on to preside over a World Cup Final. Shortly thereafter, the Trust arranged a meeting at Valley Parade, which was packed by hundreds of City fans jubilant at the return of their hero to a managerial role at the club. But McCall’s fortunes as a manager, sadly, did not match the hopes that his presence had aroused.

Phil Parkinson has been the most successful manager in City’s recent history, who took the club three times to Wembley, creating along the way a store of unforgettable memories for Bantams’ fans. This writer remembers Garry Thompson’s sweet far-post volley that put the Bantams ahead of Arsenal in the League Cup at Valley Parade. We had been allocated seats different from our customary season ticket places for this Cup game, among fans we did not know, and I was hugged spontaneously during the match on two separate occasions by the unknown gentleman seated next to me. That is not an everyday experience at Valley Parade. Then there was James Hansen’s bullet header from a corner that saw off Aston Villa at Villa Park. And the lethal James Hansen – Nahki Wells combination left us three up against Northampton in the blink of an eye, almost before we had settled into our Wembley seats. But the most emotional moment of the history-makers season occurred just after we had gone down four-nil against Swansea in the League Cup Final. City fans responded in unison with a burst of sustained applause for all that our team had achieved during the season, and the sound swept hauntingly around the stadium.

Phil Parkinson had been able to build on the history-makers success with two consecutive play-off finishes in 2014-15 and 1215-16, but he did not continue as manager beyond the heartbreaking loss to Millwall in the Play-off Final in 2016: so near, yet so far away.

The picture behind the scenes

By contrast with the constant turnover of managers, the ownership regime at Bradford City has remained relatively stable, in a determined effort to avoid the financial meltdowns of 2002-2004. Much of the credit for this outcome must go to Julian Rhodes, but the financial situation of the club is still overshadowed by the hangover from the days of Geoffrey Richmond. This applies especially to the terms of the lease of Valley Parade, which were negotiated as part of the life-saving sale of the stadium to the Gibb Pension Fund in 2004. The rental on the 25-year lease goes up incrementally every five years, and is believed to stand currently at around £350,000 p.a. This sum represents loose change by the standards of the Premier League, but it is a considerable burden for a club operating at the level of Leagues One or Two.

The club has also taken a conservative – prudent – attitude towards the accumulation of debt. Mark Lawn joined the club as a minority shareholder to the Rhodes family in 2007. Lawn made a loan of £1m at commercial rates of interest in 2008, but otherwise the business model remained unchanged. The consistent plan has been to balance the books with players’ wages and other regular costs set against the standing sources of income, including League gate receipts, commercial activities and sponsorships. The receipts from additional sources of income, including cup runs and player transfer fees, have been treated as windfall gains that provide a temporary boost without affecting the underlying budget. The policy has also been to maximize attendances at the Premiership-scale stadium by keeping the season ticket prices deliberately low. The Trust has supported this policy fully since it was first introduced in 2007.

The major change in ownership came in 2016, when Rhodes and Lawn sold their shares to the Germany-based duo of Stefan Rupp and Edin Rahic. The idea behind the deal was that Rupp would supply the money – he is said to have a personal fortune of around £100m. – while Rahic would supply the football expertise, as the resident executive in Bradford. As it turned out, the football expertise failed to materialize, as the tendency to micromanage the club accelerated and a risk-taking budget was spent without returns. Julian Rhodes was called in once again in the autumn of 2018 to advise the club and was concerned to discover that the sound financial position he and Lawn had built up at the club before the sale had evaporated within a couple of years. Edin Rahic departed unceremoniously, with Rhodes acting as an interim CEO until Ryan Sparks was appointed to the role in 2020.

Stefan Rupp has commendably sustained his interest in the club in the wake of the experience with Edin Rahic, but there has been little sign at any stage that Rupp’s commitment was likely to yield heavier investment on the playing side. The watchword is ‘sustainability’ See Jason McKeown’s article in Width Of A Post, May 16^th 2022. In many ways, Rupp has maintained the business model of the Rhodes and Lawn regime regardless of the transition to German ownership. 

A changing football landscape

Despite this continuity of business policy throughout the post-Premiership era, the environment in which Bradford City operates has changed dramatically. According to the traditional model of ownership within the English game, football clubs were owned and run by local businesspeople not as money-making machines but out of a sense of service or a desire for prestige. Clubs tended to be hierarchical and socially exclusive, with players, managers and fans expected to know their place. Although at its best this model of organization embodied an ideal of trusteeship across the generations, the neglect of supporters’ fundamental interests invited, at worst, the tragedies of which we are all too familiar. But this traditional model of ownership has now been subject to decisive challenges from two very different quarters.

On the one hand, the money-making potential of football has been exploited with breathtaking ruthlessness, especially since the formation of the breakaway Premier League in England. It has become increasingly clear, and was manifestly apparent in the proposals for the European Super League published in 2021, that the arrangement favoured by many of the wealthiest clubs is to organize a closed league of elite competitors oriented exclusively towards a commercial entertainment product, directed especially at an international TV audience. Fans are not entirely irrelevant to this vision, but their main role seems to be to generate the atmosphere in stadiums that contributes to the local colour of the TV transmission, and, more remotely, to consume the club’s merchandise via the internet.

The commercial returns available from this ‘offshore’ model are so great that clubs in the major leagues are now owned predominantly either by billionaire consortia or by sovereign wealth funds with their own political agendas. Fans everywhere want their clubs to succeed above all else, but the sources of some of these new investment funds have raised a serious question for the first time for the supporters of some leading clubs: ‘yes, but at what cost?’ And the development of the offshore model has made the financial gap between the tiers of English football ever wider, with severe implications for any lower-league club that wishes to progress to higher levels within the football pyramid.

Meanwhile, changes in the football landscape have also been taking place from an entirely different direction. It would be naïve to think that the traditional distain of the footballing powers-that-be for the interests of supporters has disappeared completely, but there is now a welcome recognition that fans are significant stakeholders in their clubs, whose interests deserve to be taken into account and views heard with respect. This development has come about in the first instance via fan campaigning, which has often arisen in recent years, at least in English football, as a result of clubs in crisis. In some cases, these fans’ campaigns have created new clubs led democratically by supporters. FC United of Manchester and AFC Liverpool spring to mind in this connection. AFC Wimbledon was an earlier example of the same trend, as the new club established after the downfall of Wimbledon FC was moved arbitrarily to Milton Keynes and the club rebranded as ‘MK Dons’. Bury AFC is the most recent of the ‘phoenix clubs’, resurrected in 2019 following the demise of Bury FC, one of football’s oldest clubs, with a continuous record of 125 years in the league.  

With the footballing authorities looking ever more complicit in the big business gravy train, and the impact it has had on the ‘beautiful game’, greater pressure has been brought to bear on them to be more transparent and responsive to fan engagement, with greater pressure on the government as well to review football governance. 

The pressure on football clubs to improve their relationship with supporters and to sink deeper roots in their communities has seen a sea-change in broader public attitudes to football clubs, which are now regarded as important assets to local communities, representing their local areas beyond the arenas of sport. This expression of local pride was certainly apparent in the Wembley excursions of 2012-13, which took 32,000 and 24,000 fans to the national stadium and generated huge interest in Bradford City and the City of Bradford, both nationally and internationally. The international dimension is illustrated by the insistence of a Japanese TV company that their interview with the Trust had to be conducted against the backdrop of the Co-op branch in Wyke where James Hansen had worked before being signed as the club’s star striker.

This new orientation to the community also includes a sense of responsibility for a variety of external initiatives, which are handled at Bradford City through the club’s Community Foundation. Outreach work has developed with minorities and disability groups. Women’s football is making up the ground rapidly that it lost a century ago, when women were banned from playing in FA stadiums. It is remarkable that footballers have taken the lead, and even faced down the government, on general issues such as anti-racism or child poverty. And the Football Supporters Association (FSA) – formed in 2019 by a merger of Supporters Direct with the Football Supporters Federation – has become a force for good nationally on all football-related matters. This broader background of change needs to be borne in mind while considering the place of supporter representation within today’s scene at Valley Parade.

The role of the Trust

The Bantams Supporters Trust: 

• is a democratic organization accountable to its members,
• exists entirely independently of the club, 
• has a defined legal status as a Community Benefit Society, and
• connects with the national supporters’ movement through membership of the FSA. 

The early history of the Trust from 2002 to 2004 brings home its vital backstop role, which comes into play whenever the existence of the parent club is threatened. The Trust is able to serve this role because of its independence – it does not get dragged down with the commercial company that owns the club – and because of its legal status, which enables it to become a vehicle for any fund-raising that might become necessary in order to keep the club afloat. The existence of the Bantams Supporters Trust thus offers an insurance policy for fans concerned with the long-term survival of their club. 

Its legal status also means that the Trust is subject to regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority, and its membership of the FSA acts as a guarantee of the Trust’s democratic credentials, including the adoption of the FSA’s Model Rules. The connection with the FSA also serves to keep City supporters in touch with national developments, and to participate in a large range of initiatives that are of interest to football fans more generally. BST officers are able to call on the confidential advice and the professional expertise of the FSA, and have found this resource extremely helpful at various moments over the years.

The independence of the Trust has to be balanced against the desirability of a good working relationship with the club, which is required in order to meet many of the Trust’s objectives. This balance should be easy to achieve, because the club and the Trust share such a strong joint interest in the health and strength of Bradford City AFC. It is to the credit of both sides that an appropriate balance has usually been maintained, although the Trust has occasionally found it necessary to resist a tendency within the club to co-opt supporters’ representatives as instruments of the club’s public relations, marketing or fund-raising strategies. 

The Bradford City Supporters’ Board 

The Supporters Board at Bradford City is a different kind of representative entity. It is 

• part of the club, 
• acts as an umbrella body for all the different supporters’ groups and interests, and 
• includes individuals (elected by the Board) who have specific skills and experience in areas relevant to the Board’s work. 

The Supporters Board came about from a suggestion made by then Head of Operations David Baldwin at a regular meeting between the club and the Trust in 2012. The Trust responded enthusiastically to David’s suggestion and negotiated with him to establish the Terms of Reference for the Supporters Board. On-pitch football issues were excluded from its remit, as were personal financial issues for players or managers, but most other issues were open to discussion, including detailed information on the general financial situation of the club. A confidentiality clause was designed to give the club confidence over the disclosure of sensitive information, so that information would only be made public at the agreement of both club management and fans’ representatives. 

The great merit of the Supporters Board is to give supporter representation the widest possible reach within the fan base. At Bradford City, Board membership is open to the ‘territorial’ groups of local supporters, such as Shipley Bantams, Bingley Bantams, The White Abbey Group and East Bierley Bantams, alongside ‘special interest’ organizations such as the Womens’ Football Club, the Disability Football Club and the fund-raising Friends of Bradford City. The provision for members elected to the Supporters Board as individuals helps to extend the range of professional experience available to the Board, and to create opportunities for fans who are not affiliated to any existing organization or group.

More recently, in November 2021, the Supporters Board reconstituted itself and has a newer layer of fan involvement with a reduced number of groups involved and an increased number of members elected as individuals, with some of the previous ‘hats’ stepping down.

The Supporters Board takes its place within the broader spectrum of supporter involvement at Bradford City, which includes the fanzine City Gent, guided by an outstanding editor, Mike Harrison, the Width of a Post blog, run with great flair by Jason McKeown, and the internet forum BantamTalk (formerly Claret and Banter). Other supporter initiatives have come and gone over the years, including the much-missed Bantams Banter podcast, hosted by Tom Fletcher and Dominic Newton-Collinge, which ran from 2010 to 2014, and the Independent Supporters Group, which flared up briefly around the late naughties / 2010s.

In practical terms, the Supporters’ Board has initiated such improvements as the electronic scoreboard at Valley Parade, which was the brainchild of one of the ‘individual’ members of the Board, Carl Smith. The Remembrance Panel of the Board was given responsibility by the club for issues relating to the Fire Disaster of May 11^th. 1985. The Remembrance Panel co-ordinated the fund-raising for the 30^th Anniversary of the Fire Disaster, which raised £300,000 for the Plastic Surgery and Burns Research Unit (PSBRU) at the University of Bradford. The Community sub-group of the Supporters Board has now inherited the role of the Remembrance Panel and takes the lead on the fund-raising for PSBRU.

Perhaps less well-known is the national influence of Bradford City’s Supporters Board. The Bradford City Trust was one of a handful of supporters’ organisations around the country invited to give evidence to the government’s Expert Working Group (EWG) on football governance in 2016. The Trust made a presentation about the Supporters Board, which encouraged the EWG to recommend something called ‘structured dialogue’ between clubs and their fans. This recommendation was subsequently adopted by the Premier League and the EFL as a requirement for all clubs. The work of the EWG has continued with the government-sponsored Fan-Led Review, chaired by Tracey Crouch MP, which reported in 2021, and came up with the more ambitious requirement for a ‘Shadow Board’. 

Recommendation 26 made by the Fan-Led Review says that:

A Shadow Board should be a licensing condition of [the new football regulator] IREF. The club should engage and consult this Shadow Board on all material ‘non football/off pitch’ business and financial matters.

The design of Crouch’s ‘Shadow Board’ follows closely the Terms of Reference of Bradford City’s Supporters Board. In addition, the recommendations of the Fan-led Review cover all manner of proposals to protect the health of the national game, including the redistribution of wealth between clubs, improved fitness tests for owners and directors, and the protection of football heritage by providing fans’ organisations with a ‘Golden Share’, enabling them to veto proposed changes in areas related to a club’s essential identity. An Independent Regulator of English Football (IREF) would underpin all these reforms.

The government has accepted the recommendations of the Fan-led Review, and it is expected that the Review’s proposals will be implemented by 2023.

If Recommendation 26 comes into effect, every professional football club will be bound by statute to create a Shadow Board. And every Shadow Board will carry the kitemark ‘Made in Bradford’. 

The continuing activities of BST

The activities of the Trust have inevitably changed and developed over two decades. Gone are the days when members of the committee sat around one of our kitchen tables addressing hundreds of envelopes by hand to send out newsletters or subscription forms to members. The Trust was rebranded recently as the Bantams Supporters Trust (although it retains its legal identity as the Bradford City Supporters Society Ltd.). A striking new logo has been designed, and the presence on the internet and social media has been streamlined and strengthened.

The Trust still relies as ever on a relatively small group of volunteers, who are committed equally strongly to the success of Bradford City and to the democratic principles of supporter representation. The roster of Trust Chairs includes Christopher Hawkridge (2002-4), Mark Boocock (April-December 2004), Phil Marshall (2004-5), Alan Carling (2006-2013), the late Mike Thompson (2014-2017), and Manny Dominguez (2018 - date). The Trust moved to a policy of free membership in 2011 and developed the Patron category of membership for those members who wished to retain their standing order subscriptions in continuing support of the Trust. Special thanks are due to the Patron members for their invaluable contribution in covering BST’s essential administrative costs.

Additional fund-raising, which has taken many forms over the years, including Race Nights, Auctions and Fans’ Forums, has provided monies that have almost always gone back to the club in one way or another, especially for player sponsorships. More recently, BST has started working with a commercial partner, World Retro/Chablais Sport, who produce retro shirts and other clothing, to help raise funds. The Trust has re-established its presence on the concourse in the Main Stand, in order to sell scarves and badges, to meet existing members and to recruit new ones.

In addition to its financial contributions to the club, the Trust has always supported special causes, such as PSBRU, the Women’s Football Club and, most recently, local anti-poverty initiatives, such as Bradford Central Foodbank. It collaborates with Bangla Bantams, Kick It Out, Fans For Diversity and the Community Foundation on selected community initiatives, in line with BST’s constitutional objectives.

The Trust has long-held commitments to the campaign for Safe Standing at football grounds, and to the Twenty’s Plenty campaign, designed to keep ticket prices for football fans nationally within manageable bounds. There are positive signs both locally and nationally for both these campaigns.

In 2018, Shrewsbury Town were the first English Club to install railed seating, and since then numerous Premier League and Championship Clubs have been trialing it in certain areas of their grounds. The campaign achieved general success in 2021, when the government instructed the Sports Ground Safety Authority (SGSA) to licence safe standing areas at Premier League and Championship clubs from the 1^st January 2022, ahead of the 2022/23 season.. Chelsea, Cardiff City Manchester City, Manchester United and Spurs all took part as ‘early adopters’. More recently, the Government said it would expand with a wider roll-out of licensed standing that would allow Premier League and Championship clubs who have met strict conditions to introduce standing areas from the start of the 2022-23 season. Read the comments of the Sports Minister here

A number of clubs have incorporated atmosphere zones where standing is tolerated or accepted. At Bradford City, we have had these areas since 2009/10, first in the Bradford End, then K Block, Kop Upper Tier and now in the North West Corner. Our club accepts the principle of Safe Standing and it seems only a matter of time before railed seating is introduced at Valley Parade.

It’s now up to each club, in conjunction with its local Safety Advisory Group (SAG), to decide what facilities suit their needs. The FSA believes that fans should be part of that process and represented on local SAGs. The SGSA also supports the FSA’s call for such supporter engagement at a local level.

The Twenty’s Plenty campaign also recorded some success nationally in 2016 when the Premier League introduced a minimum ticket price of £30 for away fans, after years of lobbying and pressure from fans across the country. In the same year, Liverpool fans forced a concession from their club on season ticket prices by staging a walk out protest at Anfield, which had been set to top £1,000 for the first time ever. In the EFL, there are many examples of high match day ticket prices. Especially in the Championship, supporters trusts have been involved in planning positive ticketing initiatives, such as ‘reciprocal deals’ involving both home and visiting fans in the two fixtures of each season with another club. More remains to be done, nevertheless, to resist the pressure for ever-increasing prices.  

Lower down the EFL, in Leagues One and Two, match day prices are not too bad, but we do have to keep an eye on them creeping up. While home fans are often able to benefit from membership and season ticket discounts and other local promotions, it is typically away fans who bear the brunt of the highest ticket prices, particularly when taking into account the investment in travel and time that they make following their team.

Bradford City has been ahead of the game in this respect, with its long-standing policy on season ticket prices, but football should be much more affordable, not only for those who can afford season tickets, but also for those who are not able to make this investment and struggle to afford the match day ticket price. These issues can only become more acute in the near future, in the midst of a generalized crisis in the cost of living.

In this and all the other areas of its activity, the work of the Trust has been dedicated to the proposition that, although Bradford City AFC must be run as a viable commercial enterprise, it is above all about a people and a place, a community of fans.

Alan Carling, Hon. Treasurer - June 2022