Is Football Too Expensive For Fans?

[RichBoiSam]

Nothing beats a full English breakfast and pint before jumping on an overcrowded, and often delayed, train to watch our favourite team win (or lose, if you're a Villa fan like me!) Making new friends, chanting the rudest songs at our opposition fans, eating a pie and chips at half time and hugging every stranger in close proximity when we score... what a life!

However, when I logged into Twitter earlier I found that "£10 adults" was trending. As a sucker for bargains it really peaked my curiosity, so I clicked on it to find out what the buzz was all about. Except for a couple of bonfire advertisements, the whole search was filled with non-league football teams advertising their match day tickets. As you would've guessed, it was only £10 for adults.

When a typical Aston Villa ticket is £40 for an adult in the Holte End, the stand with the best atmosphere, and being asked to go to a Liverpool game with friends with tickets costing £60 for a mid-table Premier League clash, it really got me thinking. With the cost of living crisis and many fans, especially outside of London, living in more deprived areas of the country, are football clubs starting to take the micky with their pricing?

There have been many campaigns, including "twenty's plenty" which are encouraging teams to reduce ticket prices, especially for away fans, to £20 to ease the burden on families. Thankfully away tickets have had a cap of £30 in the Premier League, still over 30% more than the campaign requests but is miles better than the price of home games.

We do of course need to consider the fact that football clubs often have high costs on a match day. After all, they need to pay stewards and other crucial match day staff, the policing on match days which is paid privately by the clubs, the maintenance of the stadium all year-round and the ridiculous salaries of the players and coaching team.

Despite the costs though, surely there are better ways of earning this revenue whilst reducing the cost of tickets to fans, whom themselves are forking out for travel and often spend money within the stadium and at the club store. They have sponsorships, TV money, competition prize money, membership fees for the right to purchase a ticket and retail income which includes match day gambling and hospitality.

Manchester United earn an average of £3.96 million every match day with a net worth of $2.12 billion. Having had a look on their ticketing website, a ticket for the Crystal Palace game starts at £52. In a season of 19 home games, that's £988. Of course there are season tickets available with discounted rates however not every fan has access to this as they are often sold out quickly and not everyone can pay up front. With the cap of £30 for away tickets, this comes to an average of £1,558 across the season for tickets alone. You'll probably spend at least £5 whilst in the stadium which is another £190 on top. That's without the cost of travel!

Do you think it is justified for ticket prices to be so high? Do you agree that it's too expensive and should be reduced? Let me know what you think!

[jamiexo]

I mean honestly, I feel like I'm not a very good judge since I'm not in the UK, but if we were paying $40 for a professional sports team game, that is DIRT CHEAP. Tickets to all of our professional games like NBA, NFL, MLB are soo expensive, and the tickets that sometimes go for cheap are ones where you're way the heck away from the field/court and people just look like little ants running around LOL.

So I think since it is a highly demaded thing, they'll keep raising the prices as long as people keep paying for it. No matter how expensive, people will always jump at the chance to see their favorite team at least once, so I'm not surprised that they're inflating prices.

[FlyingJesus]

They won't change it because they know that someone out there will still pay the higher figure, but yeah for most people a Premier League game is well out of range especially if you want to go regularly. I go to see my local team sometimes for £14 a ticket which is fairly reasonable for a National League game but even then it's not cheap necessarily if you do it week in week out. It's pure greed, they make so much more from the TV rights that it isn't even slightly necessary

[RichBoiSam]

I mean honestly, I feel like I'm not a very good judge since I'm not in the UK, but if we were paying $40 for a professional sports team game, that is DIRT CHEAP. Tickets to all of our professional games like NBA, NFL, MLB are soo expensive, and the tickets that sometimes go for cheap are ones where you're way the heck away from the field/court and people just look like little ants running around LOL.

So I think since it is a highly demaded thing, they'll keep raising the prices as long as people keep paying for it. No matter how expensive, people will always jump at the chance to see their favorite team at least once, so I'm not surprised that they're inflating prices.

Yeah I think professional sports tickets as a whole is ridiculously expensive. I can't comment for other sports however I'm sure there are fans who follow their team religiously like in football and it all adds up! Especially when they'd have nothing without the fans.

They won't change it because they know that someone out there will still pay the higher figure, but yeah for most people a Premier League game is well out of range especially if you want to go regularly. I go to see my local team sometimes for £14 a ticket which is fairly reasonable for a National League game but even then it's not cheap necessarily if you do it week in week out. It's pure greed, they make so much more from the TV rights that it isn't even slightly necessary

Exactly, the TV rights are in the millions themselves! Yeah it definitely won't change however many clubs, including Aston Villa, are trying to claim to be a "community club" whilst charging for everything and anything. We are changing our badge and you have to be a member or season ticket holder to vote for the favourite, and I have a membership which I received as a Christmas gift last year and cost £40 - all it does is provide the right to actually purchase the overpriced tickets as well as votes on important stuff.

Football used to be the working class sport but unless you're well off, it's far from working class at the moment. I'm lucky I go on my own or with a couple friends, I know many who bring the family and spend well over £100 a week just to watch a game!