From ticket price rises to costly pies, British football fans are being taken for granted

Supporters play a role in this: when did you ever hear one popping up on a phone-in to call for their club’s chairman to keep an eye on the purse strings?

Glory, glory – fans united? (Getty)

Next month’s Wembley FA Cup semi-finals have once again turned the national spotlight on ticket prices and the exploitative relationship between football and its fans.

Supporters of Chelsea, Manchester United, Southampton and Tottenham have accused the sport’s governing body of “opportunistic exploitation of fan loyalty” through the imposition of ticket price rises that they say are “10 times the rate of inflation”.

Prices have been held only for the very cheapest seats, where you can expect the same sort of view as the pigeons circling in the hope of dining out on uneaten chips.

Spurs fans have particular reason to feel aggrieved. Season tickets for the club’s brand spanking new stadium in north London went on sale on Monday and some fans face price hikes of up to 70 per cent when compared to what they paid at the decaying, but still much loved, edifice that was the old White Hart Lane.

My interest in the subject was tweaked after colleague Ben Chu wrote on the subject of live music where the existence of a secondary ticketing market (and the scandal over the way it operates) indicates that artists are leaving money on the table.

This is in part because bands thrive through cultivating a relationship with fans. When they play live, they’re the organisers of a big party, and the love they get for putting it on could be badly hit were they to be seen to be overly gouging the guests.

Football clubs profit from a similarly unusual, and close, relationship with their supporters. When you buy a ticket for a match, you’re signalling your membership of a tribe. You’re participating in a shared experience with thousands of like-minded souls.

As with a ticket for a gig, this is not an everyday economic transaction. It’s not the same as buying the groceries.

An unhappy Tottenham fan who called into BBC Radio 5 Live’s 606 phone-in used the supermarket analogy to highlight the issue created by the price hike he was facing, which called into question whether he’d be able to afford to experience the much loved tradition of taking the kids to the big game.

He pointed out that if he were unhappy with Sainsbury’s prices he could go to Tesco. A very different dynamic is at work with a football club: Spurs fans would rather cut off their own legs than switch to, say, West Ham, in protest at prices at their new stadium. If you were to suggest it to them, it probably wouldn’t go well for you.

The pushback against high prices in the wake of fan protests, and MPs scenting a handy bandwagon to jump on, has had some success in keeping charges down.

The BBC’s annual price of football study revealed that across the board more than 80 per cent of ticket prices in the Premier League were either reduced or frozen for the 2017-18 season. Average season ticket prices fell for the second consecutive year.

Part of the reason is TV. The revenues from the huge contracts the Premiership has been securing for its broadcast rights long ago eclipsed those derived from match day ticket sales.

But having full stadiums is important to the TV companies that shell out their billions. The sound and fury of the crowd is a hugely important part of a TV product that is sold not just domestically, but internationally.

The presence of a healthy number of away fans is of particular value. While they make up a relatively small proportion of most crowds, they often make the most noise through the real hardcore devotees being clustered together. TV viewers are drawn in by the atmosphere they create.

The Premier League’s introduction of a £30 cap on the price away fans pay for tickets was therefore not only good PR. It made economic sense at a time of increasing resistance among fans to what they were being asked to pay to get into grounds on top of the expense in terms of time and travel they were investing.

Some clubs, particularly the smaller ones, have paid attention to their fans’ economic circumstances when it comes to home games too, and to the value of cultivating a mutually beneficial relationship with them, particularly in the case of families. Huddersfield with its £100 season ticket Premier Plan is a good example.

Other clubs have also run offers, although it should be noted that even after the recent price freeze, fans in the UK pay far in excess of their continental peers, to the extent that it would be cost effective for some to hop on Ryanair or EasyJet flights to join them.

The instinct to squeeze the British football fan remains strong. If it’s not through tickets, as with the FA and Spurs, then it’s through the price of pies or other ancillary products.

Fans play a role in this. When did you ever hear one popping up on a phone-in to call for their club’s chairman to keep an eye on the purse strings and not meet the star player’s wage demands.

With fancy stadia to meet repayments on (as in the case of Tottenham), plus the cost of buying players and paying their appalling salaries, many clubs will continue to ask why they should leave a single penny on the table when the fans appear willing to pay up, even if they’re not happy about it.

Clubs charge what they charge because they can.

The notion of cultivating a long term relationship with families? There’s nothing like winning to bring ‘em in.

That attitude among some clubs will continue to exist until fans do more than hold banners up at grounds.

They only thing that will force a reassessment is if they vote with their feet and with their wallets. There isn’t much sign of that happening among the current generation. It might be different with the next one.