Near £200 million transfers. The Chinese Super League paying ridiculous salaries. Tickets for Sky Bet Championship games costing upwards of £40. Football has gone mad.
Ticket prices are always going to be an issue when it comes to fans and club’s approaches to pricing games. One club often caught in the firing line is Leeds United, where walk-up prices of a ticket for both home and away fans can be £42 on the day – an extra £5 surcharge being added to the normal ticket price.
There are obviously people who stay away from watching their team play away from home, the price of a ticket such as this when factored in with travel and food costs being more than many are willing to pay.
There are campaigns to lower this outlay, lower it to a more manageable level that would encourage fans through the turnstiles in bigger numbers. For away fans, the Football Supporters’ Federation have their ‘Twenty’s Plenty for Away Tickets’ campaign – launched in 2013.
This campaign attempts to limit the price of away tickets to just £20 (£15 for concessions) and has seen support from clubs such as Norwich, Reading, Doncaster Rovers, Bradford City amongst others.
Making football manageable for fans is often a tightrope, even Leeds United recognise this and have introduced a ‘bundle offer’ for home fans with tickets for the back-to-back home games vs Burton and Birmingham. Here Leeds fans can save 33% of the ticket price by buying both tickets together in the same transaction – with tickets costing around £20 each if bought this way.
However, all teams will have to go some to beat Sunderland’s offer (below) for Saturday’s game against Leeds United at the Stadium of Light.
🎫Tickets for tomorrow's big clash against @LUFC are available from just £10
Come down and back the Lads!
➡️https://t.co/WWDyZZsBIP pic.twitter.com/xuwwn9I12h
— Sunderland AFC (@SunderlandAFC) August 18, 2017
The offer is a ‘pay on the day’ one and the £10 ticket is for Under-16. However, a walk-up on adult ticket on the day is priced at £25, a price that is something that would likely encourage any fan to want to walk up and pay on the day.
Whilst what Leeds United, with their ‘bundle offer’, Sunderland with their ‘pay on the day’ offer and other clubs with incentives such as paid/subsidised away travel are doing are isolated instances, they are all nonetheless right steps in the right direction.
What is needed is for decisions to be made on a collective level, a level where all sides agree on ways to bring supporters, both home and away, through the turnstiles on match days. The EFL have regular meetings, I’m sure that this is an issue that they would likely be able to wedge onto their agenda at some point in time or another.
