Skip to main content

Are fans being priced out of the Premier League?

The Premier League continues to boom, breaking new ground in its popularity year after year. The 2022-23 season, when average crowds across the division topped 40,000 for the first time, saw stadiums operate at a new high of 98.7 per cent capacity.

Most clubs now have thousands registered on waiting lists for season tickets and demand they cannot hope to meet as a new, hyped-up campaign begins this weekend. Sell-outs are the norm.

Younger supporters have never known greater challenges in following their team, with prices climbing and availability diminishing. Elderly fans, too, are facing their challenges, with concession tickets under threat.

It all points towards the face of a Premier League crowd changing, with young and old both being squeezed. Traditional supporters increasingly face being marginalised.

Rule R8 of the Premier League’s handbook stipulates that concessionary tickets must be made available at every game for senior citizens and juniors but makes no reference to season tickets. Pricing and policy are ultimately left to individual clubs.

At West Ham, Tottenham and Wolves, adults paying full price are worth more to clubs than concessions, despite sitting on the same piece of plastic to watch the same game.

It also raises broader questions on the long-term direction of travel. Despite the 20 Premier League clubs raking in a combined £867million in matchday revenues during the 2022-23 season, they want to find more.

The Premier League’s polished veneer has begun to crack on this issue. Manchester City and Liverpool fans protested over price increases at the back end of last season, while supporters of Nottingham Forest, Fulham and Aston Villa have also made their unhappiness clear. At the latter, according to the Birmingham Mail, season tickets are now 91 per cent more expensive than they were 10 years ago.

The FSA’s AGM, held this summer, saw a motion for “co-ordinated action on the cost of football tickets” put forward by Spirit of Shankly, the Liverpool fan group, and seconded by others from Arsenal, Manchester United, West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Wolves, Manchester City and Bournemouth.

The answer to the question posed at the top of the article is probably, yes, and with demand exceeding supply (boosted by football 'tourists'), the problem is likely to get worse.

 

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spurs CEO attacks luxury training base

The Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has issued a withering assessment of the way the club was run under Daniel Levy, likening the state-of-the-art training centre to a five-star hotel rather than a centre of high performance.  Venkatesham was appointed to his role in April 2025, having stepped down as chief executive at Arsenal the previous summer. However, he has said that some aspects of the club were “in a significantly worse state” than he expected.  “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” Venkatesham told BBC Sport. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”  He explained that the football side of operations was the club’s main downfall when he arrived last year. [One Spurs fan wryly observed that it was like a water company sayi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more