BFCSupportersTrust
Vital Youth Team
This message was sent to all BST members today:
In exactly a week’s time, Sunday 6th November, Blackpool host Kidderminster Harriers in the FA Cup first round at Bloomfield Road.
The Harriers are an even older club than Blackpool but only reached the Football League for the first time in 2000. Their hold on league football was a short one. After five seasons they slipped back into the Conference and today they play in the sixth-tier National League North along with AFC Fylde. They do have a reputation for causing upsets in the FA Cup!
Normally an away tie against EFL opposition would be a good source of revenue for a club like Kidderminster, with FA competition rules giving them up to 45% of the gate receipts. However, with so many Blackpool fans adopting the ethical boycott (for reasons that are well understood), the attendance at Bloomfield Road on Sunday will possibly be the lowest for decades.
Blackpool Supporters’ Trust is not proposing that fans should abandon the ethical boycott for this FA Cup game, but we are putting forward a different, creative solution that we hope will benefit both Kidderminster Harriers as a cash-strapped club and our own fans who are facing legal action from the owners.
We are suggesting that any fan boycotting the FA Cup match could make a donation via the BST website ‘donate’ button. If each supporter were to donate between £6 and £13 (£6 represents the percentage of the £13 ticket price that would normally go to Kidderminster), the Trust will gift the sum of all the £6 donations to Kidderminster Harriers to compensate them for the boycott and will forward any additional amounts to the independent Justice4Fans fund.
This proposal has the grateful support of Kidderminster Harriers (who are a supporter-owned club). Their chairman has written to BST as follows:
“As chairman of Kidderminster Harriers I would like to thank you and the Blackpool Supporters Trust for your fantastic gesture. We fully understand your position with the club’s current board and appreciate your anger and frustration. We support your right to protest wholeheartedly and wish you the best of luck in your quest to resolve this difficult situation.
For you as a fans’ trust and your supporters to consider our club and the fact that we would lose much needed income with your NAPM campaign is very commendable and shows the true comradeship of football supporters.
We will do everything possible to support you this week and indeed at the game. I will not be using the directors’ facilities on Sunday and shall watch the game with our fans. I expect all of our board to do the same.
We will gladly join you for fish and chips in the car park pre game to support you in your protest.
I will raise media attention this week as I would like the football world to know about this extraordinary gesture.”
The ‘boycott but donate’ idea also provides an opportunity to quantify the reach of the ethical boycott. In simple terms, for each donation made, we have one person boycotting the club – and we will be happy to publish the numbers, so please give this initiative your wholehearted support. Just log on to the website at www.blackpoolsupporterstrust.com then select ‘About The Trust’ and the ‘Donate’ option from the pull-down menu. It also sends a strong message that Blackpool fans can look beyond their own local issues to support other clubs in the interests of fan unity.
You don’t even need to be a BST member to support this initiative –– so please feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might support the cause.
In addition, BST is calling for a joint protest with Harriers fans outside the West Stand prior to Sunday’s game. Local and national media are interested in this initiative. BST and Kidderminster Harriers are publicising what we are doing throughout the coming week. We expect radio and TV crews to be there. It would be great to get hundreds of Blackpool fans joined by the travelling Harriers fans staging a noisy protest against the way our club is being run ahead of the Cup match. Please turn out on the day if you can. We propose to congregate in the carpark on Seasiders Way from 1:00 with as many supporters, banners and placards as we can muster to make our point in the hour leading up to kick-off.
Thank you for your continued support. We will get our club back.
PS. If you are a BST member and didn't receive the email (check spam folders first) then please contact memberships@blackpoolsupporterstrust.com
In exactly a week’s time, Sunday 6th November, Blackpool host Kidderminster Harriers in the FA Cup first round at Bloomfield Road.
The Harriers are an even older club than Blackpool but only reached the Football League for the first time in 2000. Their hold on league football was a short one. After five seasons they slipped back into the Conference and today they play in the sixth-tier National League North along with AFC Fylde. They do have a reputation for causing upsets in the FA Cup!
Normally an away tie against EFL opposition would be a good source of revenue for a club like Kidderminster, with FA competition rules giving them up to 45% of the gate receipts. However, with so many Blackpool fans adopting the ethical boycott (for reasons that are well understood), the attendance at Bloomfield Road on Sunday will possibly be the lowest for decades.
Blackpool Supporters’ Trust is not proposing that fans should abandon the ethical boycott for this FA Cup game, but we are putting forward a different, creative solution that we hope will benefit both Kidderminster Harriers as a cash-strapped club and our own fans who are facing legal action from the owners.
We are suggesting that any fan boycotting the FA Cup match could make a donation via the BST website ‘donate’ button. If each supporter were to donate between £6 and £13 (£6 represents the percentage of the £13 ticket price that would normally go to Kidderminster), the Trust will gift the sum of all the £6 donations to Kidderminster Harriers to compensate them for the boycott and will forward any additional amounts to the independent Justice4Fans fund.
This proposal has the grateful support of Kidderminster Harriers (who are a supporter-owned club). Their chairman has written to BST as follows:
“As chairman of Kidderminster Harriers I would like to thank you and the Blackpool Supporters Trust for your fantastic gesture. We fully understand your position with the club’s current board and appreciate your anger and frustration. We support your right to protest wholeheartedly and wish you the best of luck in your quest to resolve this difficult situation.
For you as a fans’ trust and your supporters to consider our club and the fact that we would lose much needed income with your NAPM campaign is very commendable and shows the true comradeship of football supporters.
We will do everything possible to support you this week and indeed at the game. I will not be using the directors’ facilities on Sunday and shall watch the game with our fans. I expect all of our board to do the same.
We will gladly join you for fish and chips in the car park pre game to support you in your protest.
I will raise media attention this week as I would like the football world to know about this extraordinary gesture.”
The ‘boycott but donate’ idea also provides an opportunity to quantify the reach of the ethical boycott. In simple terms, for each donation made, we have one person boycotting the club – and we will be happy to publish the numbers, so please give this initiative your wholehearted support. Just log on to the website at www.blackpoolsupporterstrust.com then select ‘About The Trust’ and the ‘Donate’ option from the pull-down menu. It also sends a strong message that Blackpool fans can look beyond their own local issues to support other clubs in the interests of fan unity.
You don’t even need to be a BST member to support this initiative –– so please feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might support the cause.
In addition, BST is calling for a joint protest with Harriers fans outside the West Stand prior to Sunday’s game. Local and national media are interested in this initiative. BST and Kidderminster Harriers are publicising what we are doing throughout the coming week. We expect radio and TV crews to be there. It would be great to get hundreds of Blackpool fans joined by the travelling Harriers fans staging a noisy protest against the way our club is being run ahead of the Cup match. Please turn out on the day if you can. We propose to congregate in the carpark on Seasiders Way from 1:00 with as many supporters, banners and placards as we can muster to make our point in the hour leading up to kick-off.
Thank you for your continued support. We will get our club back.
PS. If you are a BST member and didn't receive the email (check spam folders first) then please contact memberships@blackpoolsupporterstrust.com
