{"id":3785,"date":"2016-02-11T09:01:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T17:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/liverpool-fans-score-apology-u-turn-from-owners-on-tickets\/"},"modified":"2016-02-11T09:01:03","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T17:01:03","slug":"liverpool-fans-score-apology-u-turn-from-owners-on-tickets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/liverpool-fans-score-apology-u-turn-from-owners-on-tickets\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool fans score apology, U-turn from owners on tickets"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014<\/strong> Liverpool\u2019s American owners apologized to fans and reversed planned rises in ticket prices on Wednesday, insisting they were not \u201cgreedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The climb-down came after thousands of Liverpool fans staged a walkout at Anfield during Saturday\u2019s match against Sunderland. Their campaign reached the House of Commons on Wednesday when British Prime David Cameron intervened, calling the rapidly escalating cost of watching Premier League games a \u201cproblem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within hours, Liverpool\u2019s owners backed down and accepted the supporters\u2019 concerns in an open letter to fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a tumultuous week,\u201d said John Henry, Tom Werner, and Mike Gordon, who also own baseball\u2019s Boston Red Sox. \u201cOn behalf of everyone at Fenway Sports Group and Liverpool Football Club we would like to apologize for the distress caused by our ticket pricing plan for the 2016-17 season.\u201d<\/p>\n

The anger was set off by some ticket prices for next season being hiked to 77 pounds ($112) in Anfield. As a result, Liverpool fans chose to leave their seats in the 77th minute of Saturday\u2019s game. Liverpool was leading 2-0 at the time and conceded two late goals in front of thousands of empty seats.<\/p>\n

Cameron was asked about the potential for protests spreading across English stadiums during Prime Minister\u2019s Questions on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a problem here where some teams and some clubs put up prices very rapidly every year, even though so much of the money for football actually comes through the sponsorship and the equipment,\u201d Cameron said.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s topflight are less reliant than ever before on ticket revenue. Premier League clubs are preparing for the start of new three-year television deals worth around 8.3 billion pounds ($12 billion).<\/p>\n

Liverpool\u2019s about-turn on prices will see the most expensive ticket price frozen at 59 pounds next season and the cheapest will remain nine pounds.<\/p>\n

The Liverpool owners said they were \u201cparticularly troubled by the perception that we don\u2019t care about our supporters, that we are greedy, and that we are attempting to extract personal profits at the club\u2019s expense. Quite the opposite is true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such protests against Fenway Sports Group would have seemed unthinkable in 2010 when the investors ended the despised Anfield reign of fellow American businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr.<\/p>\n

Protests against ticket prices aren\u2019t just restricted to English soccer. Borussia Dortmund\u2019s game at Stuttgart was held up on Tuesday when its fans threw tennis balls onto the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat tennis,\u201d read a banner in their block. Another banner said, \u201cFootball must be more affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 Liverpool\u2019s American owners apologized to fans and reversed planned rises in ticket prices on Wednesday, insisting they were not \u201cgreedy.\u201d The climb-down came after thousands of Liverpool fans staged a walkout at Anfield during Saturday\u2019s match against Sunderland. Their campaign reached the House of Commons on Wednesday when British Prime David Cameron intervened, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3785"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}