The imbalance between supporter and corporate power in English football has become toxic.

Arbitrary owners at Charlton Athletic, Leeds and Blackpool are holding their clubs to ransom, whilst the Liverpool walkout on Saturday highlighted a developing trend of the average match-goer being priced out of the beautiful game.

A new phrase has entered the vocabulary of chairmen and chief executives that was once implicitly outlawed - customers - and that alone is testament to how English football, particularly the Premier League, has transformed over the last 25 years.

Make no mistake about it, the Premier League is the most globalised and diverse top flight in the world. The players are recruited from the far corners of the globe, the twenty managers share ten different nationalities, only eight clubs have a British majority shareholder and the matches are broadcasted across almost every country. It may be situated in England, but the Premier League belongs to millions of supporters spread across every continent.

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Take Manchester City, for example. In February 2015, it was reported that Manchester City's fan base has grown an incredible 523%, but only 10million of their 141million new supporters resided in the UK. Likewise, of Manchester United's alleged 659million-strong adult fan base, only 90million are from Europe and less than 0.1% actually live in Manchester.

So perhaps it's understandable why views at boardroom level are changing, why clubs are attempting to monetise their fan bases more efficiently than ever, why the cost of matchday tickets are spiralling out of proportion and why appeasing local supporters is less of a priority. The fact is, if Liverpudlians refuse to pay £77 for a seat in the Main Stand next season, it's likely a tourist from Asia or America holidaying in England probably will.

But the passion, commitment, militancy and wit of the Premier League's regular ground-fillers is as integral to the product of the English top flight as any other component. Liverpool fans proved as much when they left 13 minutes early on Saturday amid the first orchestrated walkout in Anfield history, the team enduring a two-goal collapse in their absence.

There has been a great debate over whether the mass exodus triggered Sunderland's comeback and whether that's too simplistic an explanation. But it clearly unsettled a team that was otherwise on the home stretch to claim all three points, giving a glimpse into a dystopian future of how the Reds would struggle during regular Anfield boycotts over ticket prices.

If that doesn't convince you, then let me use another example to illustrate why Premier League chairmen should be doing more to protect the rights of local fans.

ECW, or Extreme Championship Wrestling, was the grunge to WCW and WWE's mainstream hair metal in the 1990s. It lacked the resources, the pyrotechnics, the pool of talent and finance of its rivals - in fact, they couldn't even afford to light all sections of their spiritual home, the Hammerstein Ballroom - but ECW lasted years longer than it should have because of the devotion of its exceptionally hardcore fan base.

These were die-hard wrestling fanatics from industrial cities of north-eastern America who attended shows practically every week, who created a succession of ECW-unique chants -  most of which contained very explicit words - who made their own t-shirts and banners that eventually became associated as strongly as official merchandise and who steadily built a sense of community that those watching at home quickly bought into.

The resulting atmosphere, more patriotic, chaotic, comical and emotionally connected than the 50,000-odd venues of one or two-time ticket buyers WCW and WWE filled, was an integral pillar of the brand performing way beyond its means for the majority of its years in operation.

The comparison may lack substance at first glance - after all, we're talking about a low-budget wrestling promotion compared to Premier League clubs who are set to take in a combined £8billion from TV revenue alone next season - but the concept remains the same.

Atmospheres are vital to the continued success of the Premier League and localised fans - those whose families have supported the same club for generations - are the best way of consistently providing them. You'll Never Walk Alone just doesn't sound the same from foreign fans visiting Anfield for the first time, compared to Liverpudlians who've sung it every other weekend for all of their adult lives, who remember the successes of the 1970s and 1980s and still live with the scars of the Hillsborough disaster.

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With that in mind, local Premier League fans should have ticket prices subsidised rather than continually raised, especially considering matchday revenue is now a fraction of what clubs receive from television deals. During the 2013/14 season, for example, the Premier League took a combined £616million from matchdays. Next season, they'll receive £8billion from the new TV deal alone.

It's clearly within the interests of Premier League clubs, but perhaps it has required an event like the Anfield walkout, not to mention the ensuing media pressure, to make them realise. Liverpool supporters proved local fans still have more power than clubs would have them believe, despite the seemingly unstoppable rise of corporate influence, and every chairman, owner and chief executive now ignores the lessons from Saturday at their own peril.

A Premier League absent of local supporters, emotionally and genealogically connected to their club, will eventually crumble. Clubs must start doing more to preserve the fans and families who've followed their teams for decades, long before 'global audience' was even a phrase in the Premier League vocabulary.

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