It’s getting MORE expensive to watch football!

by John Fitzsimons on 02 June 2010  |  5 comments
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Fancy watching Arsenal every week? It'll cost you up to £1,825!

Time for a really unpatriotic confession – I’m really not that bothered how England do in the World Cup.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll watch all of the games and cheers us on. I want England to win. But if we make a complete hash of it, and crash out in the Group Stage, well, I won’t lose any sleep over it.

The honest reason is that for me, my club comes first. I’m a West Ham fan, and I would gladly swap an England World Cup win for an FA Cup win for West Ham. Heck, I’d probably swap a World Cup win just for West Ham to make it to the quarter finals.

Season ticket renewal time

And while the World Cup may be the main football on the horizon, the new domestic season isn’t that far away. As a result, fans up and down the country will have been receiving emails, letters, even text messages, all about one subject.

Season tickets.

It’s renewal time for those that already have season tickets, or for those like me that only go to a few games here and there, it’s time for the clubs to try to entice us into buying them with early bird offers and details of all the free extras you get for shelling out for an entire season’s football in one go.

The league table

Around this time last year I had a look at how the various Premier League clubs compare when it comes to season ticket prices. Let’s have a look at how things stand this year, and if there has been much of a change.

Once again Liverpool are the only club still to release their season ticket prices for the coming season (they have a significant waiting list anyway), though last year tickets ranged from £634 to £682 for adults, putting them in the bottom three.

Value for money

It's worth noting that the top four are exactly the same this year as last year, with Blackburn, Wigan, Bolton and Fulham continuing to offer fantastic value for money.

Going up...

As if Arsenal weren’t charging their fans quite enough to see a team that has won nothing in five years, season ticket holders at the cheapest (and I use the word loosely) end will be stumping up an extra £70 for the privilege next term.

Their Northern London rivals Tottenham are also doing their best to wring every last penny from their loyal supporters, with significant increases across the board. Fellow London clubs Chelsea and West Ham have also seen fit to increase their prices.

Sunderland also deserve note for having increased tickets by a fair amount across the board.

Going down...

Just two clubs have cut prices at both ends, Stoke City and Manchester City, and both deserve praise for doing so.

Everything’s dearer in London

One thing is clear from a look at the table – fans of London clubs get charged through the nose to support their teams. However, the fact that a club like Fulham, coming off one of the most successful seasons in their history, can still charge half (or even less) of what their capital rivals do shows that it doesn’t have to be like this.

Doubtless people will make the supply and demand argument – more people want to watch Arsenal than Fulham for example – but that doesn’t mean it is right, nor that it is sustainable for clubs to charge such amounts.

There has to come a point when fans say enough is enough. Surely that day cannot be too far away?