Enough is Enough!

[GG Riva]

And no wonder. They're fleecing their loyal fans. 😠

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/crr9gz9j914o

[weemike]

Are they though? For £66 you get to see 22 x £50m+ players plus the odd absolute superstar, 

The quality of the football is far superior to what we are paying £20+ for. 

[scottyboy]

You could go and see a decent band play for just under 2 hours for that. You could even get entertained.

Anyone here like the Human League?

https://youtu.be/kUpKPVDqy_E?si=bNwXsJniPBjXwypN

[Piracy]

Life in the UK is too expensive, never mind just the football.

[Deutsch Par]

3 hours ago, Piracy said:

Life in the UK is too expensive, never mind just the football.

Not just the UK tbf.  We cannae get a weekly shop for a family of three under €100; and that's in the cheap supermarket!

[Eastendtales]

18 minutes ago, Deutsch Par said:

Not just the UK tbf.  We cannae get a weekly shop for a family of three under €100; and that's in the cheap supermarket!

Stop buying olive oil then! 

[GG Riva]

5 hours ago, weemike said:

Are they though? For £66 you get to see 22 x £50m+ players plus the odd absolute superstar, 

The quality of the football is far superior to what we are paying £20+ for. 

If folk think that's good value for money and are happy to pay it, fair enough. I don't think a club's loyal fans should pay through the nose because its owners have chosen to spend megabucks on its players and is paying them megabuck salaries, which nobody needs.

You usually see a far superior brand of football than we're used to at EEP, but that's not a very high bar, is it? 🤔 There are some very forgettable games in the EPL, too. You won't get a partial rebate if that happens to you. 

If you compare football to other forms of entertainment, it doesn't come out very well. If you go to a pop concert, the cinema or the theatre, you'll have a pretty good idea of what's on offer and that you're likely to enjoy it. A football match offers no such guarantees. We always live in hope of seeing a great game but the reality is that more often than not, it's a disappointing spectacle.

I can't quantify how many Pars games I've attended since 1963, but there aren't that many that live in the memory, but there are plenty I've erased from my mind to avoid unnecessary pressure pain. 😒

[Paradox]

7 hours ago, weemike said:

Are they though? For £66 you get to see 22 x £50m+ players plus the odd absolute superstar, 

The quality of the football is far superior to what we are paying £20+ for. 

Teams in the Bundesliga seem to have a much more realistic approach as far as I can tell in terms of ticket pricing - perhaps @Deutsch Par can confirm?  The Clubs in the EPL are just being greedy - and because they have the money, they continue to pay ridiculous salaries and transfer fees.  These fees aren't funded solely by the ticket revenue, but fans are continually being asked to shell out - apparently Arsenal make £1m at every home between tickets and hospitality.  But if they weren't paying mental wages, bonuses and transfer fees (including agents fees) would they really need this?

I remember hearing a story a few years back - a guy had been a season ticket holder at Chelsea for 50+ years.  Sat/stood in the same bit the whole time. Was now having to give up his ST as it had gone up to something nuts like £5k for the season!

[SanguinePar]

I think the comparison with a gig or even, say, a big West End show, is a reasonable one, when it comes to top level football and people perhaps seeing one or two games a year (or ever) as a treat/day out. It lasts about the same amount of time, you have performers at the top of their profession and the quality, while not guaranteed, is at least very likely to be high. From that point of view, why wouldn't they price games at a similar level?

The problem is that football is (or has been) also about repeat customers coming every couple of weeks for half the year or more. Nobody goes to see Cats or Chicago or U2 or Taylor Swift 20-odd times in 6 months, but that's what happens in football.

But in an era where clubs are often beholden to shareholders, and where at present there seems to be enough demand from what might (slightly uncharitably) be called daytrippers, it's hard to see why they would drop one-off prices much, at least at the biggest clubs. Don't know the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if football tourism (both domestic and international) has become a major phenomenon in the last 20 odd years, flooding the market with enough new customers to effectively guarantee sales - albeit non-repeating ones. As a result, the more traditional fans fall victim to the inflationary price pressure caused, at least in part, by the daytripper market.

Obviously the hope is that season tickets will alleviate the cost to regular fans by offering a discount for multiple purchases. But even when there is such a discount, not all fans want or can afford such a big one off commitment, while still wanting to attend multiple times a season. That's why I always liked that the Pars offered a way to pay the ST off in increments and spread the cost - not sure if that's still the case?

Even if it is though it starts to get complicated - eg, do you charge interest for what is effectively credit? And do you offer more of a discount for a full upfront payment vs regular payments vs individual match tickets? In a way it seems fair to do so, but on the other hand it effectively subsidises those people lucky enough to be able to afford the full ST in one payment, which doesn't seem right either. And start to add in different price levels for different areas AND different potential concession rates (with their own levels of multi-buy discounts) and it gets really complex.

Not really sure where I'm going with this tbh - but if and when football falls out of fashion, it'll be interesting to see how well clubs at all levels are able to adapt to remain competitive while suddenly needing their regular fans a lot more than they seem to just now.

Of course, with all the other income streams from TV and merch and so on, it may be that they never go back to needing their traditional fans in that way, and as a result teams become even less connected to their geographic communities than they are already and start shifting to new cities (or countries) like in American sport. Which is a pretty depressing thought.

[SanguinePar]

38 minutes ago, Paradox said:

apparently Arsenal make £1m at every home between tickets and hospitality.  But if they weren't paying mental wages, bonuses and transfer fees (including agents fees) would they really need this?

I guess though that if they weren't paying such mental wages, etc, then they wouldn't be making so much money. It's a bubble - they now have to make the money to retain the quality to make the money to retain the quality... At some point the bubble will burst though. Unless they reach a point where the gate income is barely a blip in the overall income.

[Deutsch Par]

You're right @Paradox.  Most German clubs have tickets that are generally affordable for everyone.

I think it was Uli Hoeneß at Bayern München who was quoted as saying something like "Yeah, we could put our prices up and still sell out but that's not in the interests of our fans".

Fortuna Düsseldorf have a ballot for two games a season for people to apply and get free entry (pretty sure that I read the number of people who applied for the game against Eintracht Braunschweig was three times their capacity).  Talking of which Braunschweig have a system for people on a low income to apply for tickets at a lower price than the standard entrance price but normally you can get a Bundesliga ticket for around the equivalent of £15 depending on the club, the football pyramid is absolutely massive here and most of the time you can find a match near you for €5 and buy bottles of beer for €2 a pop (or do what a few people did at the Osterode derby and buy a whole crate, absolutely unthinkable in Scotland). 

[Deutsch Par]

“We could easily charge more than €120 for a season ticket. If we raised it to €350, we’d gain an extra €2 million – but what would that really mean for us?

 

For fans, the difference between €120 and €350 is massive. We don’t see our supporters as cows to be milked.

 

Football must remain accessible to everyone. That’s the biggest difference between us and England.”