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19th October 2015
04:09pm BST
At the same time, weWOWwe are encouraging and enlisting fans to take advantage of their own to the tune of £20 for a walk around a free museum, or £50 for a 'matchday experience' - not including a ticket - which includes 'singing songs' at a pub, or even an accompanied walk around the megastore.
It's utterly depressing. For anyone who has grown up following football at any level, the matchday experience is at the core of everything. Even in this age of modern football and the Disney-fication of the national sport, it's still special.
Logically, there's no point in going. The weather's often sh*t, the roads are jammed, and public transport a nightmare. You spend far more money than you can really justify to be regularly disappointed with the fare on show.
Why do that, when you can watch on telly with replays, a perfect HD view, and all the amenities and comfort you could possibly need? Why trudge to the game when you can go for a slash at home without queuing up or your feet sticking to a pissy floor?
As trite as it sounds, it's because of the people. It's meeting up with mates and making new ones, and being on nothing more than nodding terms with complete strangers for years. It's the buzz on the way to the game and the shared joy/angst after it.
You can't buy that...until now. The last part of the game that couldn't be controlled or forced or monetised will become all those things if weWOWwe and their 'partner fans' have their way. Supporters are now happy enough to swindle their own.
You can go to the pub and be welcomed in, no trouble. You can join in the songs. For all the bad press that football fans regularly get as the scum of the earth, they're generally f**king lovely at welcoming you into the fold.
You can't - or you shouldn't - put a value on that. These celebrity fans made famous through their fan channels will argue back with the basic principles of modern capitalism. There is after all a demand, and they are merely the friendly supply.
I'd humbly suggest "bollocks to that". What you're doing is selling bottled water with the tap you used to fill the bottles hiding behind you. The 'match experience' is there to be had, it doesn't need you as the opportunistic middle-man.
The underlying suggestion seems to be that there's rich foreign fans out there willing to cough up so what's the harm in taking their money. Such logic differentiates the gullible foreigner from the streetwise local. And that's just snide.
A lot of these travelling fans wake up at all hours to follow the team we take for granted on our doorstep. For many of them coming to the Emirates or Old Trafford or Anfield will be a once in a lifetime experience.
You're not making it more convenient, you're robbing them of the free authentic togetherness and camaraderie that reds show towards reds, or blues show towards blues, wherever you're from.
weWOWwe claim that their Partner Fans 'know very well' the 'local football culture'. I'm not sure they do, or they wouldn't be involved. The whole venture reminds me of what Rudyard Kipling called 'the world's oldest profession'.
The key difference is at least pimps and their personnel don't trade on people's dreams.
