Under the commercial operations dominated by American capital, the relationship between the club and its fans has plummeted to a new low, according to The Daily Telegraph. This tough crackdown on ticket touts, however, has affected loyal hardcore fans, enraging Ratcliffe, and Manchester United season ticket holders feel abandoned by the club.

More than five weeks ago, Luca Black resigned as the U21 fan representative for the Manchester United Fans' Forum. He reached a disheartening conclusion: the club was stripping the forum of all real power, constantly creating a huge divide between the team and its supporters.

"I was telling someone the other day, it's like a frog in boiling water," Black explained. "The frog stays in the water, the temperature slowly rises, and by the time it notices, the water is already boiling.

That's pretty much how I feel now. You fight all the way, and you keep communicating with the club, hoping they can make improvements for the fans, because they always promise to listen to us. But I feel now that commercialization has completely taken over. The distrust among fans has doubled, tripled, quadrupled."

Even before the Glazer family completed their hostile takeover of Manchester United in 2005, Manchester United fans had been in constant conflict with the American owners.

Two and a half years ago, when billionaire Jim Ratcliffe from Failsworth took over the daily operations of the club, fans had hoped for an improvement in relations. But now, this crackdown on ticket touts has completely shattered that expectation.

After the Glazer family sold a significant minority stake, Black and other fan representatives had heard Ratcliffe outline his vision for the future of Manchester United in an online meeting.

However, many fans believe that the Ineos Group founder's approach of layoffs and cost-cutting has led to a series of highly unpopular policies that have deeply hurt long-time fans. These measures are essentially gradually squeezing out long-term season ticket holders and replacing them with tourists and day-trippers with higher spending power.

In the middle of the 2024 season, the club introduced a unified £66 ticket price for members and abolished all discounts without prior consultation, which sparked fan protests.

Elderly fans accused the club of raising prices to create barriers, keeping them out of the stadium: the original 50% senior discount was halved to a uniform 25% discount.

Many fans who had habitually sat in the same seats in the lower tier of the South Stand for years were asked to change seats, as the area was to be used to create so-called premium VIP viewing packages. The club stated that this adjustment was made to try and control the increase in season ticket prices.

However, what truly brought the already tense and antagonistic relationship between the club and its core fans to the brink of collapse was this aggressive crackdown on ticket touts.

Fans protested in the streets days before the Manchester Derby

at Old Trafford on Sunday. Ninety minutes before the Manchester Derby kick-off, protesters marched from the Bishop Blaize pub on Chester Road, along Sir Matt Busby Way, with red, green, and gold smoke rising.

Not far from where these long-time season ticket holders protested, shouting that the Glazers and Ratcliffe "treat us like dirt," several touts were still selling tickets to overseas tourists and casual spectators for £220 each (approximately €250).

"Want to crack down on real touts? Just open the gates on match day and you'll see," said Steve Crompton, a member of the 1958 fan group that organized the protest, in an interview with The Telegraph. "Come out and face the problem.

What truly infuriates Manchester United's hardcore fans about this is that many loyal fans feel they are being lumped in with professional touts, stigmatized from the start."

A total of 685 fans had their season tickets revoked, while another 464 received warnings or penalties, including being unable to transfer home match tickets or apply for away match tickets this season. Manchester United insists that this operation has broken up several large organized touting groups, allowing more tickets to fall into the hands of genuine fans (as ticket demand currently outstrips supply), and denies that innocent fans have been unfairly penalized.

The club also stated that some of the tragic stories circulating on social media are untrue; contrary to rumors, the club has provided affected fans with evidence that their accounts were flagged and explained the reasons.

However, a large number of fans hold completely different views. They are shocked by the communication methods, the execution process of the crackdown, and the immense damage this has caused to the already fragile fan trust, while the actual results achieved seem minimal to them.

Many fans were shocked to suddenly receive stern emails demanding proof that they had not resold tickets.

The fact that 468 fans proved their innocence and had their penalties lifted after explaining their account usage also sparked huge controversy. Fans are dissatisfied that the club did not fully understand the reasonable sharing of account login permissions among fans before launching the crackdown, which caused great distress to these family fans.

Penalized season ticket holders can appeal to an independent football ombudsman. However, fan groups are concerned that with Manchester United reallocating season tickets after the international break next month, there is little time left for a full review of appeals.

Manchester United stated that this operation dismantled several considerable touting groups. The Telegraph Sport asked the club if relevant cases would be referred to the police. However, sources indicated that the primary goal of this crackdown was not criminal prosecution, and the evidence standard for criminal conviction was not met.

Fan organizations are closely monitoring to ensure that the single resale price of tickets remains within the original season ticket price range; the club, for its part, insists that it will not profit from ticket resales.

"It's often the most loyal fans who travel with the team year after year who are targeted, due to poor communication and condescending, threatening tones, as if we are troublemakers," Barney Chilton, editor of the fanzine 'Red News,' told The Telegraph.

"We all want to eradicate touts. But the current approach is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, which is quite ironic: many Premier League clubs are constantly raising ticket prices, making themselves almost no different from touts. All of this was foreshadowed, but for long-time fans who have supported the team for years, it feels like the beginning of the end."

The unique aspect of this ticketing dispute is that fan groups, whose positions are often divided, have now reached a consensus and expressed their dissatisfaction together.

"If Jim Ratcliffe has done one 'good' thing for this club, it's uniting all the fans against him," Crompton said.

Intense meeting with Berrada

Black's last fan forum meeting was held on July 30th in the 'Legacy Club' premium VIP box at Old Trafford, with Manchester United CEO Omar Berrada in attendance. The meeting, which lasted over an hour, focused on the crackdown on ticket touts, and the atmosphere was tense. Black said: "It was much more intense than usual, and the debate was very heated."

At one point, staff had to intervene to stop a club official and a fan representative from arguing loudly with each other.

During Richard Arnold's tenure as CEO, he worked hard to repair trust with fans after the European Super League debacle. That incident was the last straw for fans who had long resisted the Glazer family. In May 2021, fans stormed Old Trafford in violent protest during Manchester United's match against Liverpool, causing the game to be postponed. But the goodwill that had slowly accumulated has now almost entirely disappeared.

Black believes that the substantial power that once belonged to the Fans' Forum has, to some extent, shifted to the Fan Advisory Board, which Berrada co-chairs. This committee has no meeting minutes, and attendees are required to sign non-disclosure agreements.

He acknowledges that confidentiality has some merit, as meetings sometimes discuss financially sensitive information that could affect the publicly traded company's stock price. "But I wrote in my resignation letter that I felt the confidentiality requirements had been used to cover up information far beyond what was necessary, and I stand by that," Black said.

The Premier League has entered its 35th season. In the recently closed summer transfer window, 16 out of 20 teams are foreign-owned, and the entire league spent a record-breaking £3.49 billion in the player transfer market.

To remain competitive and generate more revenue in the world's richest football league, more and more fans believe that these historic clubs are shedding their community roots and working-class culture. This American capital-dominated commercial model is intensifying, prioritizing corporate clients over long-standing fans who support the team year-round.

Manchester United is not the only club facing this problem. Supporters of several top clubs have similar experiences. While football fans often hold opposing views, on this issue, everyone can often find common ground.

Broadcasting rights are not controlled by Manchester United, and the team cannot guarantee Champions League qualification and huge bonuses every season, and sponsorship also requires effort to secure. Matchday revenue is one of the few income streams the club can directly control.

Stephen Mejji-Mery has followed Manchester United since 1968, never missing a home or away game. He estimates that he has traveled 500,000 miles to watch games.

When discussing this matter, his tone showed little anger, but rather a deep sense of loss. He feels a huge disconnect between the club and the fans attending matches.

"My feeling is, they don't care about us," Mery said, raising his voice amidst chants against Glazer and Ratcliffe at Sunday's protest. "We are the heart and soul of the club, and without us, football is worthless. But honestly, I think they don't want us; what they say is completely different."

Matt Finlay from Worsley, a season ticket holder for 18 years, expressed the same opinion. "Deep down, everyone feels that ordinary season ticket holders are valued less," he said. "I pay £800 for a season ticket and spend almost nothing extra apart from a pint at halftime; but day-trippers are different, they buy expensive tickets and are likely to spend a lot in the club shop.

Regular attendees know this. But if we are replaced by an equal number of tourist spectators, the stadium atmosphere will completely disappear."

This touches on a core issue that is difficult to reflect on a balance sheet: once the stadium atmosphere deteriorates, how much damage will it cause to the team's performance and the club's overall revenue in the long run?

Sunday's match was very telling: when Manchester City, playing with ten men, scored a controversial leading goal in the 60th minute, the stands did not erupt with the kind of massive support the players needed.

Before the match, the usual flags on the Stretford End were removed, leaving only one banner that read: "The way you treat us is a disgrace." If core loyal fans feel unwanted and unappreciated, this will lead to a dangerous situation.

"The psychological aspect is crucial. If fans feel valued and part of the club, it's a world of difference from simply feeling like consumers waiting to be harvested," said an anonymous season ticket holder. "If consumers think a product is bad, they can complain. But unconditional support encourages players to take risks and be creative. Once that support is eroded, the damage is immense."

Steve Hayward-Jones, a member of the Manchester United Fans' Trust and operator of the social media account Cheeses of Nazareth, has been helping innocent fans caught up in this ticketing dispute. With the anger over the controversy still simmering, he said that the atmosphere at Old Trafford was very subdued during the season's first home game, a 5-2 victory over Ipswich.

"When you have a 5-0 home win, and the stadium is lifeless, you know how deep the divide between the club and the fans has become."

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