Tom Lamont, writer
No refunds! Because there are no guarantees. The lack of a guarantee is the whole point of sport – at least for this spectator. You’re not buying a Dyson here, or a raincoat, with a full and justified expectation of cleaner carpets, or dryer shoulders. Will a game (a race, a test, a morning session, a day’s play) be entertaining? Worth the money to see live, or worth the time parked on a sofa at home? Nobody can say, and phew for that. It’s only the unpredictability that makes these repetitive events so endlessly watchable.
I’m not saying I don’t feel sorry for the Sunderland fans who travelled miles and spent plenty to watch their side play poorly. (Just as I’ve felt sorry for myself in similar situations. I once paid £50 to watch Spurs in a cup quarter-final – and within eight minutes they were two goals down, and out. I sat there doing the sums: about £6 per minute of authentic competition.) But sport isn’t always good. And if you’ll forgive the contradiction, that’s why it’s good.
Danny Kelly, journalist and broadcaster
Well done, Tom! No hardcore fan wants their money returned: suffering for your team – including shelling out for awful performances – is all part of the supporter’s traditional role. But the Sunderland fans didn’t ask for their hard-earned back; it was one of the players, goalkeeper Vito Mannone, who first offered it. And Vito may, however unwittingly, be on to something. The relationship between football teams and those of us who devote ourselves to them has utterly changed. We used to be fans/supporters/followers; now we are “customers”. The commercial transaction is glaringly obvious, and since we can’t express dissatisfaction by changing allegiances, maybe the odd reimbursement wouldn’t go amiss.
Besides which, former Sunderland player Danny Higginbotham, breaking the ex-pro’s habitual omerta, told me he thought several of Sunderland’s team had “downed tools”. In what other industry could you do that and not expect some sort of financial sanction? The refund could be football’s first step toward – whisper it – genuine performance-related pay.
TL I see your Danny Higginbotham and I raise you a Micah Richards. I happened to speak to the former Manchester City and England defender for another article recently, and conversation turned to the perennially raised question about whether English players really want to play for their country. He told me that of course they do: “Every player wants to do the best they can do. Every player wants to play for the best team that they can play for.” Richards’s gist was that it’s nonsense to think that footballers playing in the hardest league in one of the world’s hardest sports don’t care for the game, or don’t try. They wouldn’t last a minute. And I’m inclined to agree.
But let’s say we go ahead with your policy of financial sanctions. That’s going to be tricky to enforce. Presumably someone owes 50,000-odd Brazilians their money back after that 7-1 against Germany in the Mineirao last summer. Who? The manager? The centre backs?
DK No difficulty at all. In fact, I’d really extend this... At the end of each match, the players of the home side gather in the centre circle. The owner/chairman/oligarch trundles out a (huge) wheelbarrow containing all that week’s wages in cash. Using mobile phones, linked to those giant screens, the fans/“customers” vote for how big a slice of the pie each player gets. This season at our beloved Spurs, for instance, most of them would be potless, while Hugo Lloris could afford an extension to his diamond-encrusted house.
TL I noticed Sunderland offered its fans the chance to accept the refund, but redirect the money to a children’s hospice in town if they wanted, which seemed pretty classy. They didn’t specify whether that cash would be sent across town in a wheelbarrow, though.
Not sure I’m into your customer/fan distinction, making refunds the norm, by the way. You’re a customer when you visit the cinema. But if the film’s awful (and even if the director, you’ve been told by an omerta-breaking soundman, “downed tools”), you wouldn’t expect your money back. You choose the way that you want to be entertained and then you take a punt that you will be. Sport, art – it’s a gamble.
... I have a feeling you’re about to tell me you would come out of a bad film and ask for your money back.
DK It’s illogical, I know, but I don’t react in the same way to non-football endeavours. Years ago, I saw a film called The Norseman, a vehicle for Lee “Six Million Dollar Man” Majors, about a Viking searching for his old dad, who’d been enslaved by, erm, native Americans. Monumental bilge (if hugely memorable). Equally, it’s never occurred to me to send a bill to a group whose new LP has disappointed me; otherwise the Stone Roses would still be giving me reparations for Second Coming. And I’ve certainly never invoiced any of the myriad bands I’ve seen ignoring their hits and instead stomping determinedly through the unlistenable nooks and crannies of their horrible new record.
Which brings us to U2. How can we apply the Refund Rule to their latest record, which they’ve kindly sent to us (trans: electronically inserted into our lives!) for nothing? Do we have to pay them to exorcise it from our iPods?
TL But they’ll lob in a hit or two at the end, right? And after an hour’s determined stomp through unknown new stuff, the hits sound better than ever. Those unfortunate Sunderland fans who paid to witness a club low might end up finding the experience of the next big win feels all the better for the monster dud that came before. Sunderland will humiliate some other club before long. So will Brazil. Spurs might even settle a cup tie in their favour in eight minutes. It’s sport. Results come around. That’s the refund.
DK I totally understand, and have experienced, that rollercoaster feeling. Mmmmm... lovely. But of course that costs the football corporations no actual money. And there’s the rub. Clubs are obsessed with “revenue”, nearly always at the expense of their “customers”: £50 for a ticket; £3.50 for a “match brochure”; a fiver for a gristle’n’bark pie. At its worst, English football is a kleptocracy that puts payday lenders to shame. Until that changes, there will be no refunds, no reform, no reconnection of disillusioned fans with the sport they helped to achieve global dominance.
Mind you, maybe it’d be best if this whole refunds-for-inadequate-performance thing got buried. If not, it might easily spread to include radio broadcasters, TV presenters and the writers of excellent newspaper debates. The horror... the horror...
