FC United
of Manchester
30 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
For value, experienced professionalism and reliability
• Airports • Theatres • Hospitals
• Care homes • Schools • Holidays
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0161 223 1066
raised through donations, community
shares, loan stock and crowd funding
it is the culmination of an extraordinary
collective effort in a time of austerity.
Maintaining the club’s principled
commitment to affordable football
whilst competing at a higher level
and striving, wherever possible, to
avoid “outright commercialism”,
is a delicate balancing act. Whilst
almost all other clubs at this
level and beyond are happy
to splash a sponsor’s logo
across their shirts and many
benefit from the investment of
wealthy owners at FC United
we are proud to say that we do
things differently; the players’
shirts remain refreshingly free
of advertising and there are no
sugar daddies.
Yet FC United’s admission
prices (£9 for adults, £5 for
concessions and £2 for juniors) are
the second lowest in the league and,
in addition, the club continues with its
pioneering “pay what you can afford”
season tickets. Last season the club sold
more than two thousand season tickets
and was the fourth best supported team
in the whole of non-league football with
crowds of more than three thousand
regularly flocking to Broadhurst Park; an
incredible level of support, week in week
out, at this level of football. And with a
mid-table finish in our fi rst season in
National League North to those looking
on it must appeared to have been a
successful season.
But whilst attendances boomed and
matchday revenue surged in 2015-16
the club struggled to adjust to life in
its own ground. A turbulent twelve
months saw the resignation of
the club’s longstanding Chief
Executive and seven Board
members and ended with some
fans staging a protest at the final
home match calling for greater
democracy and transparency at
the club.
Many members felt that
while the club had been so
focused on building a new
home the decent egalitarian and
democratic principles on which
the club was founded had been
eroded. The 50p increase in the price
of the programme at the friendly match
against Benfica in May last year, the first
match at Broadhurst Park, was widely
condemned as overly commercial and led
to a significant loss of goodwill amongst
many members.
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