The Great Football Ticketing Rip-off

[floyd__streete]

A m8 of mine follows Exeter City. He tells me that his club have put ticket prices for next season up to as much as £29 on the day to sit in the main (only) stand. This at a club on course for their lowest league finish since returning to the league in 2008, a club without a home win since October who have scored precisely 4 league goals at home since then (two of those occurring in one match).

The other week Ipswich were charging £32.50 in advance for Reading supporters to sit in a corner of Portman Road. This price raised to £35 on the day.

Ticket prices in football are absolutely outrageous now. You wouldn’t pay £29 to watch a play starring someone who was in Hollyoaks a couple of times and someone else who was in Crossroads. Football clubs are guilty of the worst excesses of Capitalism in basically exploiting fans stupid devotion to their clubs

I genuinely think that ticket prices should be capped as follows:

Prem - £40 max
Champ - £20
League 1 - £16
League 2 - £12

If that means our chav-scum footballers have to have their £300k a week reigned in then so much the better.

Be nice to think that the Government would stick up for the supporters of our national game, no chance at present what with it being (effectively) a Tory one. Many people are living within the restraints of wages capped due to financial mismanagement of others. The cost of going to football shows no signs of being similarly capped and it is sheer greed, no other explanation is plausible

[Sanguine]

Being a Tory I absolutely disagree with every part of your post, the only people who should get discounts are gays who don't mind homophobic chants.

[floyd__streete]

Being a Tory I absolutely disagree with every part of your post, the only people who should get discounts are gays who don't mind homophobic chants.

Because the themes in this post are similar to those raised in my other post today

Or perhaps I too am failing to think of those good many people who actually prefer to pay increasingly high admission prices at football

[Sanguine]

Well let's start at the top. Show me a big football club, charging extortionate prices, who is not regularly selling out their ground?

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but 'demanding' lower ticket prices when people are apparently quite happy to more - it's a strange one. You could bet your life prices would come down if attendances were falling.

[floyd__streete]

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but 'demanding' lower ticket prices when people are apparently quite happy to more - it's a strange one. You could bet your life prices would come down if attendances were falling.

Fair point. Although it prices some people out of attending top level sport. Life isn't fair I guess

Scrap the Prem capping then.....most of it is live on the box or streamable on your laptop. It should be capped lower down. £29 to watch Exeter City

Sadly, because the Apes at the top get paid so much it filters down to the Marmosets at the bottom

[Sutekh]

Nice sentiment but not really going to happen while people are happy to pay idiot money to watch their teams. Until that stops happening prices will continue to be ridiculous.

Disagree that the government should get involved whatever their colour though, there are more important things for them to be doing and if they did it for footie what about theatre, cinema, gigs etc.

[Big Foot]

I think you should tell Brighton Supporters Club m8, they can put it on their 'battles to fight' list.

[St Pauli]

Hang on, does this mean Exeter have closed the old stand on Well Street? The one on the right when standing on the big bank?

Outrageous.

When I was young I could pay £6 to watch Exeter.

Although that was the student price. And it was on the terrace home end. And City were playing in the conference. And it was 2006.

[3points]

League 2 - £12

It's £13 to watch Dover Athletic in Conference South! And £9 for Didcot Town, and that's a truly awful level of football.

Ipswich's prices area disgrace though for Championship level

[Cureton's Volley]

Not goin to Brighton this weekend for this reason. Over £30 for the ticket alone is BS. You can get 3 BJs on the Oxford Road for that money...

[handbags_harris]

Not goin to Brighton this weekend for this reason. Over £30 for the ticket alone is BS. You can get 3 BJs on the Oxford Road for that money...

Tbf to Brighton, you get travel in the local area included in the cost of the ticket (trains for example are from Haywards Heath or Shoreham-by-Sea I believe, £6.70 return from HH, £5.00 from SBS). That adds significant value to the cost of the ticket IMO, £26 or £27 for the cost of the football if you look at it that way...par for the course of most Championship clubs.

[P!ssed Off]

£29 for League 2 football = madness.

Though as you say that is the price on the day.

I go and see my local League 1 side (Colchester United) a few times a season and tbf prices are very reasonable there.
The most expensive Adult matchday ticket is £30. But tbf there are 9 different price bands for the different areas of the stadium (all seated).
Cheapest matchday Adult ticket is £22.

£6 above your proposed price ceiling.
Though if you buy in advance then of course you can get a cheaper rate.

Cheapest adult matchday tickets:
> 1 day in advance = £20
> 1 week in advance = £18
> 3 weeks in advance = £16.50
> 5 weeks in advance = £15

Plenty of opportunity to get a cheap ticket, without committing hundreds of pounds.

As a student the first time I went this season I paid £17 on the day. A bit steep for a student ticket I thought at the time.
But I only had myself to blame. The next time I bought my ticket 3 weeks in advance for £12.50. If I'd bought it 5 weeks in advance it would have been £11.50.

Colchester's got the right approach imo. There should be a wide variety of choice in match ticket prices, as is also the case at Bayern Munich, and Germany in general, where there is a huge disparity between the most expensive and the cheapest tickets, allowing people of all walks the opportunity to attend.

[P!ssed Off]

One thing I'm absolutely furious about and there needs to be serious action taken is away student ticket availability.
It is a oxf*rd scandal that certain clubs only offer visiting student fans Adult tickets.

For me Millwall (A) was more expensive than Ipswich (A) simply because Millwall do not offer student tickets to away fans.
Of course they offer student tickets to their own fans, and they're perfectly happy to take advantage of the likes of Reading who will offer Millwall young people cheap tickets when they come to our stadium.

It's a oxf*rd joke tbh.

I paid £23 for a student ticket for Ipswich (A), which for a student ticket is pretty expensive.
Millwall (A) cost £26.

Of course normally there is a rule about clubs not charging away fans higher prices than home fans.
But cheeky oxf*rd clubs like Millwall get away with doing exactly this because technically they do not offer Young Person tickets under their "Match Ticket Pricing".
No, this comes under "Member Ticket Pricing", which of course is an entirely different thing.

A Millwall fan 'Young Person' 'Member' would have watched Reading for £16/£14 depending on which stand they were sitting in. Reading fans of an equivalent age in the away stand were charged £26!

Looking at our next 3 away games I see that Brighton are up to the same oxf*rd tricks.
£32 for anyone over 18 and under 65. How the oxf*rd is a student supposed to afford that?
Fair play to Leeds and Birmingham for offering young people cheaper tickets. I could get Leeds and Birmingham away tickets (a combined £37 at student rate) for only £5 more than Brighton's £32.

[SHORT AND CURLY]

This student thing makes me laugh.
You should count yourself lucky you get some discount because they never used to do it. It used to be kids tickets - Adult tickets.

Stop moaning and be grateful for what you got.

[Silver Fox]

They want the moon on a stick

[LWJ]

.

Student or an age bracket? IMHO prices should be Under 16, Under 21, Adult, Over 65.

Students get enough free handouts as it is, why not extend it to those of us who have to pay for everything ourselves?

[P!ssed Off]

.

Student or an age bracket? IMHO prices should be Under 16, Under 21, Adult, Over 65.

Students get enough free handouts as it is, why not extend it to those of us who have to pay for everything ourselves?

If you're not a student then you should have a full time job.

[P!ssed Off]

This student thing makes me laugh.
You should count yourself lucky you get some discount because they never used to do it. It used to be kids tickets - Adult tickets.

Stop moaning and be grateful for what you got.

Presumably ticket prices were half or less of what they are now though.
If a stadium does not sell student tickets at all then that is one thing, but to charge visiting students/young people full whack whilst selling cheaper tickets to the home fans, is completely against the principle that away fans should not be charged more than home fans.

[P!ssed Off]

They want the moon on a stick

Said the generation who enjoyed a free university education and then pulled up the ladder...

[LWJ]

.

Student or an age bracket? IMHO prices should be Under 16, Under 21, Adult, Over 65.

Students get enough free handouts as it is, why not extend it to those of us who have to pay for everything ourselves?

If you're not a student then you should have a full time job.

Pushes those of us who do work full time away from football..