Should Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club refund the One Hotspurs Ticket Membership?

kevdoyley

Football players in the Premier League resisted calls to accept pay cuts through the coronavirus pandemic. Clubs however declared they would use the UK government’s furlough scheme to fund the wages of non-playing staff, without having first agreed cuts with high-earning footballers. This was later retracted. Julian Knight, chair of the digital, culture, media and sport committee of MPs said at the time; “This exposes the crazy economics in English football and the moral vacuum at its centre.”

Mr Knight called on the UK chancellor Rishi Sunak to impose a “windfall tax” on clubs that are unable to agree significant player pay cuts “to reimburse those hit hardest in the pocket”, if a deal cannot be reached.

Leading clubs in Europe, such as Spain’s FC Barcelona, Italy’s Juventus and Germany’s Bayern Munich agreed temporary pay cuts with players. Barcelona players accepted cuts of 70 per cent, Bayern Munich 20 per cent, while at Juventus players have waived salaries for four months.

The historic Austerity program between 2010 and 2019 set more than £30 billion in spending reductions to welfare payments, housing subsidies and social services. Overall, the government spent £137 billion of public money to provide loans and capital to stabilise the banks. However, most of that money has been recouped over the years.

As of March 2019 the net cost of the bank bailouts—once you factor in money recouped by the government—was £27 billion, so the people on low income & that were hardest hit from Austerity, paid the balance. The people running the banking empire did not suffer & still continue to receive dividends.

The banks continue to use clever processes and loopholes so they don't have to pay anything back to the people. At the time of the collapse we were told that when the banks returned to profit the shares would be distributed to the people. This never happened.

Those same people in our society should be properly paid. The people born into money and the celebrity rich that make their money from the people idolising and clapping them (like footballers) need to distribute their money back through a New CV19 Tax. How is a footballer worth more than a hard working band 4 nurse on £24k, that has received national clapping, but no extra income?  The average salary for a Premier League footballer is £3m. 125 times more than an average nurse.

With the football clubs not showing any immediate respect to the non-playing staff, I though a request to have a partial refund of the One Hotspurs Membership was required to see what the answer would be. The reply was interesting. It was based on the membership not been cancelled within 14 days. It of course would not have been cancelled in that time as we never knew a pandemic was in our midst. The only accessible benefit that is unrelated to the matches during the pandemic is a £10 off voucher for online shopping. However, this is still related to attendance. The One Hotspurs membership is primarily purchased for access to priority tickets and exchanges.

A request was emailed to suggest the club extend the ticket for next season for the period that has been lost this season or refund the value minus the proportionate cost of unused ticket benefits. The club said no. It would be interesting to see if MSE can help & advise and what others think?

Sandtree

What was all the junk at the top about when your question is in the last 1.5 paragraphs? 

The terms and conditions of your membership will describe what happens if you want to terminate early. The contract will also say what obligations the club has to you in exchange for your fee and is likely to have a force majeure clause which means they cannot be held responsible for an act of god (eg pandemic).

The rest of the words above your question, or at least the bits I read, suggest you have a low opinion of clubs and so not sure why you thought they'd put their hands in their pockets if not legally required to do so by the terms of the agreement.