Beyond The Touchline – Season Ticket Pricing

The second edition of our newest regular feature on the site, ‘Beyond The Touchline’ which looks at topics off the football field. This week Paul picks up the baton and has looks at the rising cost of season tickets in the Premier League and whether there is true value for money or if the fans are simply being priced out of the game.

Football is nothing without fans. It’s commonly used phrase these days as is Against Modern Football (#AMF).

This article is aimed at touching on the issue of season ticket pricing generally and then moves on to what the situation at Palace currently and into next season.

The price of season tickets across all clubs continues to cause major concern for many fans as they are generally only heading in one direction.

The Premier League itself still remains the most lucrative football league in the world and ticket prices appear to exceed those in Europe and especially in the Bundesliga where they appear to have realised that ‘football without fans is nothing’. 

You only have to look at the packed terraces, club colours and great atmospheres to see that they are definitely doing something right.

Season tickets in Germany are generally well priced and this has certainly not affected their teams or national side.  Not only does Germany have a different approach to its ticketing policy but the country had two Champions League finalists in the early part of 2013. 

The set-up appears to be more concerned with building success for the future at all levels and making it affordable for all.  This also seems to occur in conjunction with a conveyor belt of talented youngsters coming through the ranks and making an impact for their club sides and in turn the national team.  This policy is the complete opposite in England with clubs buying the best from abroad rather than bringing players on through youth and academy set-ups in many cases.

Although Bayern Munich does not completely replicate this model due to being more of a brand in its own rights, the Champions League winners are still able to keep season ticket prices very low and actually comparable in price to a most expensive ‘single game’ ticket at somewhere like Arsenal.

The Bayern Munich president was quoted as saying;

‘We could charge more than £104. Let’s say we charged £300. We’d get £2m more in income but what’s £2m to us?’

 

An average match-day ‘cheapest’ ticket in the Premier League is around £30 whereas the price in the Bundesliga is around a tenner.

Based on the table (further down this article), Arsenal actually have the most expensive season tickets in both the most expensive and least expensive categories.  The most expensive match ticket comes in at nearly £130 and nearly £2,000 for a season ticket.  You do not have to look far down the road to find Tottenham whose season tickets are priced only slightly below those at the Emirates.  Moving to the East we find West Ham who are actually more expensive to watch than last season’s champions Manchester City. For Chelsea, their most expensive ticket is priced at £1250 and there are a number of Premier League clubs charging around the £1,000 mark for the best seats in their house.

Our very own Crystal Palace also had a fairly substantial increase in season ticket prices across all categories. Our season tickets have increased by around 20%. Some of this may be deemed as understandable considering it may be partly due to our promotion from the Championship. It is still however very hard to quantify considering the huge amounts of revenue that comes into the club since promotion and whether increasing season ticket prices has much impact to the overall wealth and stability of the club.

Unfortunately the trend appears to be on the rise across the board even though some clubs froze some of their prices before the start of last season. The table below shows pricing across the board based on an article in ‘The Guardian’ daily newspaper at the beginning of the season.

There are a number of questionable areas but you need to ask how on earth Arsenal are able to offer season tickets 2.5 times more expensive than that at Manchester City?

The trouble with the whole system is that clubs can govern what they want to charge and there does not appear to be any form of standardisation or governance across the board so fans continue to be the victims of any price increases.

If a club wants to price their tickets highly then they can with fans being treated as customers and not supporters which is potentially another worrying factor for the future of the game for supporters and perhaps generally. Supporters groups have been quoted as saying to the Premier League that there is a real risk of ‘future generations being lost’ to the game which you have to tend to agree with the cost of going to a game being so expensive for fans and especially who families.

At the end of January, Crystal Palace Football Club launched its ticketing campaign for the 2014/15 season with the message to ‘buy early to save and purchase at the best prices’.

This offer provides a discount of 10% if purchased before 1^st April with an expected increase of at least 10% if purchased after this date. This increase appears to be coming whether or not the club secures its status in the Premier League this season.

The cheapest ticket for next season currently sits at £420 for an adult. This is still quite a bit of money so the best advice would be to off-set some of this cost with the addition of a free season ticket for fans under ten years of age (if purchased with an adult ticket and in one of the family areas). 

A further trade-off is that the free child ticket can be used for an adult on ‘school nights’.

A positive from this initiative is that in addition to the current family areas the club is also extending a further block in the Main Stand for family use. This on the surface appears to be a very wise move from the owners as they look to get more young fans into games in the hope that these will be adult full price season ticket holders of the future. Discounts are also available for ‘young adults’ between 18 and 21 years old, students and OAPs.

The club are also offering an instalment plan for season tickets to fans with payments being separated into twelve monthly instalments with the official site quoting around £38 a month for adults and £19 for children that are unable to benefit from the under tens offer. These prices are based on the cheapest season ticket.

The underlying issue is that many of us supporters have been to see our teams in the flesh come rain or shine in all weathers and for many years. The cold days and nights are something that we ‘tolerate’ because we love the experience, we love watching live football and we love our clubs and teams.

Some people may say that it is a choice but to many fans it is habitual and something that is actually part of our lives. The situation is not too dissimilar to that of season tickets on the trains where people have no choice but to pay the increases in order to go to work which is a necessity in life. 

As fans we also need to pay the price if we want to keep the amazing spectacle of live football in our lives and to enjoy the necessity of stadium football. Based on this and in many respects the people that set the ticket pricing have us over a barrel to some degree.

The big question is that if the price still continues to increase year on year then would it be enough for you to stop attending games and supporting you club in all weathers? 

I will leave you with that question but with the current trend then we may well find out for ourselves in the relatively near future if something is not done to address this by the powers that be. This is just one of many traits concerning the current game but is this something that we just need to accept as part of modern football? 

Here is my previous article on the subject of Against Modern Football (#AMF) – you decide…