The Cost of Being a Football Fan
You know how Premier League clubs are receiving about seven trillion more pounds this year, with the new TV deal and everything? Well, it seems that’s not enough to stop them gouging supporters at every turn. A Virgin Money survey recently quantified just how much, and how much more than previously, it costs to go to a match in England.
The Virgin Money Football Fans’ Price Index puts the cost of going to a match – including travel, a ticket, merchandise, food and drink – at £91.87, a 17.8% rise in the last year…Season tickets can cost about the same as two months’ mortgage payments. Arsenal is the priciest, with an average season ticket price of £1,355. Spurs isn’t far behind with an average of £1,064, followed by Chelsea at £900 and Liverpool at £675.
For the new season there have been even further hikes. Sunderland introduced the most shocking increase, at 19%, while Manchester United pushed prices up 14% and West Ham 7%.
According to Virgin, one-in-eight fans will not be renewing their season tickets, despite price freezes and cuts at some other clubs (mostly ones who couldn’t fill their stadium due to overpriced tickets in the first place, mind you).
As well as not showing up, many fans are also signing the Football Supporters’ Federation petition for fairer ticket prices:
The objective of the campaign is to ensure that football again becomes the “people’s game”. Prices across the board in this country are absurd.
The recent decision by Fulham to charge Manchester United fans £45 to visit Craven Cottage when earlier in the season Wigan Athletic fans had been charged £25 shows how clubs are penalising supporters of those clubs with bigger away followings to subsidise a decline in home support.
It’d be a shame if that spectacle we tune into every weekend in England comes at the cost of people’s mortgages, for no other reason than pure greed.
Photo credit: jontintinjordan.
English season ticket prices are even more striking when viewed in a European context.
My season ticket at Inter (second tier, at midfield), cost 350 euro; one can get one for the curva for as little as 145 euro.
Italy is often said to be the best value in Europe in this regard, but prices in Spain, Germany, France, Holland and elsewhere are much closer to those in Italy than they are to those across the Channel.
One has to wonder whether the English prices are sustainable, particularly at clubs that aren’t regular participants in Europe and/or those that are looking to expand their stadia.
The supporters’ section at the Chicago Fire is $240. Of course, the level of play in MLS is not comparable to the Premiership, unlike Serie A; on the other hand, it is comparable to Championship or League One, and I bet there aren’t many Championship teams offering season tickets for a little over a hundred quid.
At the risk of playing devil’s advocate, that roughly $200 buys “a gallon of petrol, a pint of lager, a bacon roll, a train fare, a match ticket, a replica shirt, pay-per-view cost and a match programme.” Is a $60+ replica shirt an every-match purchase? And aren’t the match ticket and PPV essentially complementary (you’ll buy one, but not the other)?
The rest is harder to dispute. But as a fan of a perennially top-20 college (American) football team, I’ve also seen it all before. I “donate” $250/yr to the school’s Athletic Fund to assure the right to purchase two tickets at about $40 times 7 home games, for roughly $52/ticket true cost. Like at least a quarter of the home fans (who have moved away from school to where the jobs are), I drive 250 miles each way, getting away for $35/trip only thanks to my diesel VW. When we play at Duke or Wake Forest, our fans pay $40 for tickets, while the next visiting team’s fans only get charged $25.
Conclusion: Dedication costs money. And I say that as one who had to give up his Washington Nationals baseball ticket package this year. The trick is not to price your product so high that you kill off part of the show (soccer fans) or your future (parents with children).
Josh – I must be missing something, but where does it say “roughly $200 buys “a gallon of petrol, a pint of lager, a bacon roll, a train fare, a match ticket, a replica shirt, pay-per-view cost and a match programme.””? I didn’t see that part somehow, in either article.
I agree those would not be typical items to buy for each game (train fare and petrol?), but wherever that was, the context must surely be that they’re averaged out over the season.
Tom – the basket was described was in the article I linked in my own comment at uk.virginmoney.com (see the “Notes to editors” at bottom).
Even after you pull out the unlikely every-match purchases and the complementary charges, you’re still looking at $115 or so per person. Even considering that ManU and a couple of the London clubs may skew the average ticket price — median might be a better measure — it’s still an expensive day out. Attending top-level sporting events has become a high-priced endeavour, and management is on a very sharp edge between maximizing year-to-year profit and ensuring that the next generation of fans aren’t priced out of existence.