Monday, October 25, 2021 at 8:48 PM• Jeroen van Poppel • Last update: 20:51

FC Groningen is following its own supporters with a statement against the start time of Sunday 8 p.m. in the Eredivisie. The Pride of the North, who kicked off against AZ (2-0 win) at that time, says he feels ‘the pain’ of the late Sunday game despite the revelry about the victory.

That is expressed by the Eredivisionist in ‘hard figures’. “With 5,988 no-shows, the number of supporters and sponsor relations that had a valid entrance ticket for Euroborg, but did not make use of this on Sunday evening, was twice as high as normal,” FC Groningen reports. “As a result, the team on the field not only missed an important part of the support of the supporters, supporters let the club know through many emails and phone calls in recent days that they were disappointed with the starting time. And that hurts FC Groningen.”

The supporters of Groningen already made a statement during the match by holding up signs with the text ‘stop Sunday 8 p.m.’. The club fully supports this and also saw the individual sales disappointing for the duel with AZ. “The number of individual tickets sold was half lower than in the last home match against FC Twente, namely 2,671 against 5,412,” the club writes. “A loss of income of approximately 49,000 euros. Compared to the home game with FC Twente, the catering turnover was about 29,000 euros lower. The Pride of the North has opposed playing football on Sunday evening at 8 p.m. from the start, because this time that is unfriendly to the public excludes supporter groups. The hard numbers support the club’s resistance.”

General director Wouter Gudde hopes to be able to say goodbye to the time soon. “In total, our financial loss is at least 75,000 euros, but what is much more important: we sell a product, in this case a season ticket, which the supporter cannot use,” says Gudde. “The figures confirm our feeling that playing football on Sunday evening 8 p.m. is a very bad idea. We find this development worrying and would like to have a discussion based on the facts. Hopefully the other clubs will also map the numbers and come to progressive insights “We have made our point clear and substantiated it with figures. Everyone can draw his or her own conclusions. From now on we will discuss it further within the ECV and draw a line under it in the publicity.”