Football, a game of two halves, played between two teams over 90 minutes. A game where the money involved in it rises year on year, yet slowly, attendances seem to be decreasing. We’re all loyal to the team we support, there’s nothing that we want to do more than go and watch our team wherever they play when the weekend arrives. However, in the modern day, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
Ticket prices are something that we are seeing more and more about in the news. It’s something that is slowly starting to put people off watching their team, not because of a lack of loyalty, but due to the realistic cost that comes with it. The Football Supporter’s Federation aim to raise awareness to this, in their words:
“away numbers are dropping thanks to the obstacles in place – ridiculous ticket prices, rising costs of travel, TV messing about with fixtures, worst seats in the house, unfriendly stewarding, police interference with KO times and “bubble matches”
The problem seems to be that whilst clubs at the top end of the Football League pyramid get wealthier, the cost to the average fan is ignored. Not only this but the increasing cost of tickets in the Premier League is having a knock-on effect in the Football League, with clubs implementing Premier League prices, where Premier League football isn’t played.
As a Leeds United supporter, I’m going to use Leeds as a case study, to highlight the average cost of following your team in a season. To start with, before the season starts, many fans purchase season tickets to ensure they get to see their side play every other week at home. At Leeds, the cheapest cost for an adult season ticket at the start of the season was £440, so that’s £440 already paid before the season or travelling away has even started.
The real expense then comes when you want to follow your team elsewhere. With the season nearly at a close, Leeds have just 2 games away from home left to play, Charlton and Sheffield Wednesday. That means that ticket prices for these games are already up and available to view. Away ticket prices have varied massively depending on the club, from Norwich City at £40, to Rotherham at £23 for the same ticket. This is a lot of money on it’s own for individual games, but when added together it highlights how expensive following your team can be.
At Leeds, if you purchased an adult ticket for every away game individually, you would have to hand over £670 just for yourself. An Adult season ticket is offered to buy at Leeds at the start of the season, the cost of this is £714, both figures exclude cup games. Prices have increased in some cases from last season, an adult ticket at Derby would cost £36 this season, whereas last year you would have had to pay £32.
The ticket prices don’t include travel either. A train ticket from Leeds to Norwich would cost around £45 each way on a Tuesday night, (the night the game was played), there are also no trains back following the game, unless you were willing to wait near 6 hours at Ely to get back into Leeds at 08:18 the next morning. With travel and ticket, you’d be looking at £130 just for one adult, for a midweek game, a huge ask for someone to attend the game.
So the cheapest method of watching your team play live in all 46 games would be £1,100, just for the tickets.
The FSF run a ‘twenty’s plenty’ campaign which aims to cap all adult away tickets at £20 (£15 for concessions). If that rule was implemented by the Football League, this cost would become £460 maximum for all 23 away games, £210 less than this season. Further details and a petition can be found on The FSF website.
It’s not only Championship club’s that suffer. The BBC’s ‘price of football survey’ found that increases in ticket prices outstrip the cost of living. The survey also found out that 15 Championship clubs, 10 League One clubs, and 4 League Two clubs had cheapest season tickets that were more expensive than last seasons Premier League champions Man City. The average cost of a match-day ticket in League One increased by 31.7%, and in League Two, there was an increase of 19%.
What this shows is that football is rapidly becoming too expensive for the average fan to afford. People can’t be blamed for a lack of loyalty for not attending games in most cases, when you have to travel long distances, combined with possibly having to buy multiple tickets for family, then the cost of watching your team week in week out becomes unrealistic. Prices will continue rising season after season, and unless action is taken sooner rather than later, the Football League is going to become too expensive for the average fan to attend.
