The Premier League Ticket Price thread

Premier League tickets: fans have been taken for granted for too long

The mind-boggling TV deal offers a glorious chance for the Premier League to give something back to supporters who cannot change their team as simply as they could switch supermarkets for a cheaper tin of beans



Capping away tickets at £30 is a clanging no brainer in PR terms and has little downside but the Premier League clubs are missing out on a historic opportunity to right a wrong.

When a few hundred fans marched in the summer sunshine on the Premier League’s headquarters, an expensively understated block in Marylebone, in 2013, one particular banner lodged in the memory. Nabbing the title of a Manic Street Preachers song, it proclaimed “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next” alongside a picture of a priced-out father dragging his son into the pub to watch a match.

It was this picture, held aloft on a march down Baker Street that featured representatives from some 40 clubs to a tinny soundtrack of Public Enemy’s Fight the Power on a portable ghetto-blaster, that sprang to mind when Ian Ayre attempted to defend Liverpool’s new pricing policy at Anfield this week.

“We can’t devise a business plan for the facilities of Liverpool and include all the revenues we expect because of a TV deal,” he said. “TV deals move around. The TV revenue goes into a completely different product on the pitch and the prices of that could be X, Y or Z.”

Which, given that TV income has risen exponentially and now gives clubs certainty that they will receive at least £100m for each of the next three seasons assuming they can avoid relegation, is among the more asinine reasons given for continued price rises that outstrip inflation by several hundred per cent since the dawn of the Premier League era.

It also contained worrying signs of trying to drive some sort of wedge between armchair fans and match-going ones (notwithstanding the fact they are often one and the same). And it betrayed the mindset of a breed of Premier League owners who believe they can combine success on the pitch with profits off it. “Of course everybody would like the tickets to be cheaper, including us, but that’s not an option for us right now,” said Ayre. To which the only sane response is: if not now, then when?

The huge increase in television income, to at least £8.3bn over three years once international deals are factored in, gives Premier League clubs a historic opportunity to think strategically about their futures.

At a time when matchday revenue contributes an ever smaller percentage of their total income, it appears to be one they are determined to pass up. This could have been a cleansing moment – a much-needed opportunity to reset the relationship between clubs and their match-going fans. Instead, it could yet become corrosive.

In response, it feels as if something has shifted. The anger over pricing is no longer the minority pursuit of the few but a mainstream concern among many season-ticket holders. In the 1980s, we paid less but were packed on to terraces in unsafe, unsanitary conditions – piss running down the back of our jeans, crushed against barriers.

Once Lord Justice Taylor recommended all-seater stadia – largely paid for out of public funds – clubs took the opportunity to start ratcheting up prices. Today, there is a more diverse, more comfortable crowd – but one that is paying through the nose.

Football has become a premium product and it is an almost irrational fear of undermining that status that seems to have paralysed decision-making among Premier League executives. Introducing a cap of, say, £30 for away tickets is a clanging no-brainer in PR terms and in reality has little downside. It would head off further protests, at least for the time being, and would at least show a willingness among the cloth-eared executive class to listen to their consumers. It addresses a clear need, with a fifth of all away seats unsold last season compared to near sellouts in the home ends, and maintains the atmosphere that the Premier League’s executives have been able so skilfully to monetise around the world.

Anyone who doubts how integral the atmosphere and pageantry generated between rival supporters is to the overall appeal of the Premier League should visit the vast studios in west London from which it is packaged, sold and broadcast to the world. Shots of passionate fans in packed stands, their chants and cheers turned up high in the audio mix, are endlessly recycled as one of the Premier League’s USPs.

An away ticket price cap would at least be a start. It would tell match-going fans, unloved and feeling the pinch as matches are shunted around the calendar for the benefit of television (a feeling that will only intensify next season with the introduction of Friday night football), that they have not been completely abandoned. And it would barely cost clubs a penny in the context of their vast rises in income. The fear of the big clubs that oppose the idea is that it would somehow enrage their own home supporters who were paying more and remove their ability to set their own prices. It is not a matter of cost but of control.

There is little evidence for the former and most fans would surely understand, and support, the fact that away fans across the league were benefiting.

Instead, those clubs opposed – Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea among them – would rather see an increase in the so-called Away Fans Fund that would allow them to subsidise travel and other schemes for their own supporters.

As with so many other areas – from grassroots facilities to supporter ownership, from coaches in schools to community investment – this mind-boggling Premier League TV deal offers a glorious chance for a one-off corrective. It provides an opportunity for clubs to maintain their competitive advantage over other European leagues while reconsidering their belief that they must squeeze every last penny into wages and transfer fees or take out profits.

Stretch pricing has become the mantra of the Premier League marketeers. And while there is nothing wrong with high corporate prices at the top end supposedly subsidising those at the bottom, the reality is that in most cases the former has happened but the latter has resolutely not. It is not an original point, but fans who cannot change their team as simply as they could switch supermarkets for a cheaper tin of beans have been taken for granted for too long.

Premier League clubs have become conditioned to supporters paying ever higher prices and still filling their grounds, or gradually replacing those who can’t with those who can, devoting their energy instead to growing their overseas fanbase and chasing ever more lucrative commercial deals.

Faced with the prospect of middle-aged crowds growing old together, most Premier League clubs have taken action to ensure that there are a greater proportion of kids represented. The crunch point is now slightly later, with fans who enter their teens and 20s no longer able to afford to go. The profile of the sport is changing and with it the atmosphere within stadiums.

Meanwhile, pricing schemes for both season tickets and match-by-match purchases have become ever more complex, with endless categories and qualifying criteria. The line between the most expensive tickets and the cheapest hospitality has become deliberately blurred at some clubs, while others offer a handful of cheap tickets aimed seemingly more at the annual “price of football” surveys than their fans.

This is not a black-and-white argument. There are shades of grey. Some clubs are clearly better than others – some because they have to be for reasons of geography or status, others because they genuinely have a longer-term strategy. Fans at Sunderland are perhaps less exercised than those at Liverpool. Leicester fans, top of the league and with some of the cheapest tickets in the country, aren’t complaining much at all.

But there is a wider issue. When there are howls of protest about the state of the grassroots game, it’s worth remembering that it is the arcane structure of the Football Association that has contributed to a legacy of underinvestment (a fact that has dawned too late on outgoing chairman Greg Dyke). When the outrage about the Fifa circus subsides because the soap opera surrounding Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini has reached a denouement, it is worth remembering that all that money siphoned off from TV deals and ticket scams down the years could have gone into football development or keeping World Cup ticket prices down.

When we fall over ourselves on transfer deadline day to froth about the latest record signing, we should remember that we’re fuelling the inflation that keeps the money-go-round spinning and makes its way on to pay-TV subscriptions and ticket prices.

The Football Supporters’ Federation, which organised that 2013 march that has mutated into the Twenty’s Plenty campaign and that eye-catching Anfield walkout, is mulling over its next move and will meet fans’ groups in the coming week. A mass walkout is considered risky and unlikely but there will be a range of options up for debate including targeting sponsors and clubs directly. When clubs turn fans into consumers it can be little surprise when they question value for money.

There was also irony in the fact that the Premier League chose this week to relaunch its “brand identity” at a time when bonds between clubs and fans are at their most strained. With Barclays, and its toe-curling adverts paying cloyingly insincere tribute to fans, moving on as title sponsor, the Premier League has taken the opportunity to rebrand. In a video meant to capture its essence, the colour, skill, energy, passion, community spirit and international appeal are rightly celebrated.

But for those who consider the response of the 20 Premier League clubs to their outrageous fortune in taking advantage of structural shifts in the media market to trouser upwards of £8bn unsatisfactory, the soundtrack should not be the stirring orchestral swell chosen to underpin the montage but another more urgent mantra.

It is the one that cascaded down the Kop and will fill other grounds before the season is out: “You greedy bastards, enough is enough.”

by @owen_g / Guardian