The ones who get left behind are the traditional football fans who would go and see their team every week. It's now too expensive because the teams have found another type of supporter who will pay the higher prices. It's hard to criticise the football clubs for this. If you had a product you sold for £20 but then found you could sell it to someone else for £30 would you keep selling it to your original customer for £20?
Yes, I'd keep selling to the original customer for £20 and I'll tell you why. If you found the customer prepared to pay this £30 and found him objectionable and boorish and not really understanding the product he was buying, then I'd suspect he'd ruin the basic principle of what I was selling. And you see that's what's happening every week. Fans who don't know the song and applaud while it's half way through; 'fans' who applaud the other team giving the ball away; applaud the other team making a mistake; arrive at their seats ten minutes late laden down with plastic bags and hot dogs, spend the game with their faces buried in PDAs and leave with ten minutes to go when your team's 1-0 down or level with all to play for; 'fans' who wear half and half scarves! I don't care what term the 'marketeers' ascribe to them, to me, they are parasites ruining the heritage of the game and undermining the bedrock it depends on.