By Editor • Nov 30th, 2008 • Category: Articles

Everyone is feeling the effects of the economic downturn and in 2009 it is not going to get any better; or at least so we are told by the money men, analysts, media and regulators.   And if they say so it must be right then as long as politicians do not have there tuppence worth.    In laymans terms it costs an arm and leg to get into football matches these days and that is before you have even reached the turnstile with your ticket.  The single fan attending the game on his own can decide what he wants to eat or drink and budget accordingly.   However, the father with his two kids in tow cannot be so choosy.   Children want sweets, crisps and drinks to keep them occupied and on top of that they want to visit the club shop as well.   If you are having a completely bad day that could hit the family man even more with junior shirts costing anything up to £30 and that is without the additional costs on top should any aspiring youngster want his name on the back with a number printed as well.   If the club shop has it all in stock of course. In England its reaching crisis point in terms of match day admission prices.    Even harder to bare is that prices have went sky high throughout the league from Premiership to conference level.   Granted there are exceptions such as Wigan Athletic in the Premiership who offer pricing at the fair point of the swinging barometer.   But almost every club is ripping off its fan base left, right and centre as ticket prices spiral beyond even an once of common sense.Most people, if they are lucky, earn something like the national average wage. That is what the government spins out anyway so it must be lies.   Across the league system things have gone haywire with even the national wage pricing some out of the game in terms of hard cash anyway.   Almost every club has quietly nudged the match day price up by a pound or even two every year and even then always way over inflation.   When you calculate that very few companies offer wage rises near the rate of inflation to everyone its clear that every passing year means you get hit more.   Patterns emerge outwith this and you do not have to be an analyst to work it out that credit cards are how many choose to attend games.   Clubs relegated from the Premiership continue to charge top-flight prices either because the bank overdraft is forcing them too; over inflated players wages still have to be paid or that they feel they might be able to get away with fooling the public into thinking they are still a big-time club with Premiership players for another season.

Lower down the league pyramid things are getting equally sinister. Darlington were charging £18 for the cheapest tickets for a recent cup game against non-league Droylsden. Swindon meanwhile charged visitors £24 to sit and watch basement football from a team struggling to string two wins together.  In Scotland things are not getting any better either. Aberdeen charge fans a cheapest price of £21 to see the talents of Motherwell and Kilmarnock hardly value for money.   Paying that at Pittodrie Stadium gets you cold, wet or freezing depending on how the North Sea nearby feels and you have often the pleasure of sitting in a near empty stadium with no atmosphere.   Matchday at Ibrox or Parkhead is even more expensive with supporters charged through the nose for ordinary Premier League fair upwards of £24 or more. The increasing amount of empty seats at Parkhead on match day tells a story that the club are not dealing with.   This is that even season ticket holders are not bothering to turn up for games as the stuff on display on the pitch is awful and the atmosphere no better.   New technology installed within Parkhead at the turnstiles has repeatedly let fans down and meant queuing up even for meaningless games meaning fans often miss the start of matches.   Long gone are the days when you paid £5 for an adult ticket for the annual Scotland versus England fixture.   Believe me that was what it cost as I still have the ticket for evidence. That may have been around the same time as the when the Berlin wall stood but it was only 20 years ago; hardly a lifetime.   Has football changed that much that an equivalent game of the same type today would cost upwards of £30 at least.   Another problem is that so called watersheds such as the Bradford fire and Hillsborough have made things worse for fans and not better.   In the report commissioned after the Sheffield event Lord Justice Taylor set a “fair price” for football of £6 at top-flight matches. The all seater part of the report may have been implemented but the match day pricing has not.   

Mentioned earlier were Wigan which has now become one of the cheapest Premiership grounds to visit.   Wigan Athletic and its owner Dave Whelan seem genuinely reluctant to price out any of their small band of loyal supporters and are desperate to attract new ones, with value for money season tickets and match day pricing for children, adults and senior citizens.    This is part of a wider issue that clubs are not latching onto.   Wigan choose to take into account the local economy and population in its part of Lancashire. It is maybe not ethical business thinking more just a common sense approach.   As a consequence it is this breadth of prices – or “ticket price elasticity” – that so many football clubs lack both in Scotland and in England.   At the other end of the scale is Tottenham Hotspur who choose to continually exploit their market to the maximum with cheapest tickets starting at £30 and prices then soaring to £70 for the visits of Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea. Away fans are not given special treatment either as reprehensibly, the away fans at Stamford Bridge are now housed in what is left of the famous Shed end and charged near £45 for the privilege. Only Levski Sofia fans were charged less to get in when Chelsea played the Bulgarians at home.   

Fans on low incomes are getting out of the habit of attending the big matches and instead picking and choosing which games to attend or saving up money and going abroad once or twice a year.   Even affluent acquaintances with rich traditional football following backgrounds in professional career jobs no longer consider going to the match as part of their social life.  Instead they assume tickets are either unavailable or unjustifiably priced. Chelsea will sell out the majority of tickets for its games but have resorted to advertising some games via tourist offices or hotels to shift unsold tickets. The corporate stuff may sell but the seats are not fully selling.    Abroad things are not perfect but the value for money and match-day experience is healthier than it is in the United Kingdom. Take Germany and the Bundesliga and the example of Capital club Hertha Berlin.   A variety of category prices are available for Bundesliga games with prices ranging from 10euros to 18euros depending on whether it is Arminia Bielefeld or Bayern Munich visiting Berlin. I  n Australian the A-League has emerged and served to offer Aussie Football fans a good value product with value for money entry.   Matchday prices for Sydney FC games range from 33 dollars to 19 dollars for games against the likes of Queensland Roar and Melbourne Victory. In the MLS Chicago Fire offer supporters a wide range of packages from exclusive corporate packages to tickets that enable you to stand on the terraces.   Fire encourage those who wish to stand with the most fanatical fans 20 games a season for 200 dollars and that is far better value than anything on offer in the UK. What is more the MLS clubs are actively encouraging a core of hardcore fans who bring colours and passion to games and encouraging others to join in actively through the club website. What is wrong with the game in the United Kingdom that clubs actively screw fans for every penny they can and then do everything they can via match day stewarding and self rightous operations teams to crush anything that resembles an alternative atmosphere.

When the cost of watching a Premiership match can be upwards of £50 it can come as quite a shock to find that this is far from the complete price of admission to a game of football.   Just like Ryanair there are hidden costs involved in buying tickets with fans having to pay additional pounds in booking and administration fees. Followers of the Scottish National team have to fork out £40 every two years for the pleasure of purchasing a ticket for home qualification matches and just to be considered for away games briefs. Equally, many of the top Premiership clubs force fans to fork out to join a membership scheme for the so called 'away travel club.' The moral of the story is that where once you were able to turn up to a match and hand the turnstile attendant your tenner, supporters today need to be aware of a multitude of add-on costs to the advertised admission price.     And where does it all end and on top of that, why is it fair to pay booking fee of £2 for game tickets?   When you walk into Boots and hand over an advantage card you pay for your shopping you do not pay for the pleasure of the advantage card or pay the shop assistant for administering your purchase.   Its really is a scratch your head situation for many people. Why do we deem this suitable for football tickets when buying them and accept it as perfectly normal.   Fan mentality is really hard to understand.    Membership systems and away travel schemes have been around for some years now, but the charging of additional booking or administration fees is relatively new to football. The lack of ability to pay at the gate any more has a lot to do with health and safety and club security staff controlling who comes and goes at games. Theatre ticket agencies use booking fees as a means to take a slice of profit from the ticketing process and find customers for theatre shows. Other areas of the UK entertainment industry gradually saw the money to be made in this way and football was rather slow off the mark to spot the cash-spinning opportunity but did eventually in tandem to the emergance of Sky Television deals and all seated stadia. There is some validity in theatre ticket agencies charging a fee to earn their crust and finding consumers for shows but football clubs are asking extra for the administration of their own tickets from which they already make a profit.  Even if you pick a ticket up via a ticket office on the day of a game for some reason the booking fee remains.   

It gets worse in other ways with clubs using premium-rate phone lines for fans wanting to buy tickets. Aberdeen used Premium rate phone lines for ticket sales up until the 2008 season but eventually realised that in the interests of customer service it was not worth the hassle.    To buy a ticket for Premiership clubs via phone lines may cost 60 pence a minute to listen to a long three minute pre-amble about up coming matches and that is before you work your way through a computerised system to make a purchase.   Press one to hear the choices again; press two to get information about a credit card; press three to but the new replica shirt for next season; press four to hear these choices again.  Where does it all end?   If you are seriously unlucky you can spend several pounds on hold in a rip off queue then find out that unless you have two vouchers from previous games you are out of luck anyway.   It truly could be an issue for the Office of Fair Trading and Nicki Campbell on Watchdog on the BBC. There may be nothing wrong trading wise with booking fees, but such costs should be clearly displayed and it would seem that all but a handful of clubs show the extra charges and even then not until you have got to the part about entering your bank details.    Clubs counteract any criticism of booking fees by suggesting that phoning up is one of several ways to buy tickets. This is true but also impractical in a number of ways.   For one, work migration has increased and fans do not always support their local team and phoning or booking on-line is really the only viable solution.   Secondly, queuing up on match day at a ticket office is not a realistic realistic option if you live on the opposite side of the country. Equally silly is matches being declared all-ticket affairs when the ground is only going to be three quarters full or even half full.   Last season's Scottish FA cup third round match between Aberdeen and Falkirk in Falkirk was declared all ticket for supporters. For those who had no ticket on match day a small portacabin opened outside the away end one hour before kick off for the purpose of selling tickets to fans. No electronic facilities to purchase ticket existed and at one point correct change was required from those purchasing. You then were faced with the ridiculous situation of the portacabin being watched over by two policemen (for no apparent reason) and then having to approach the manned turnstile to hand over the ticket to receive a stub return back from the person behind the turnstile. Would it not have just made sense to be able to pay at the gate via a cash format in the first place?  

Equally infuriating are the rules enforced at Pittodrie Stadium on match day when Celtic and Rangers fans come to visit Aberdeen. Local police in Aberdeen have stated that no tickets are to be sold to any fan after 12.30pm on match day and its even earlier for early kick-offs. You then have a scenario where a father and son, who may have made a last minute decision to see the game live, are then turned away from being able to buy a ticket because the police believe it may cause or lead to a security breach. After years of runaway ticket inflation and at a time when a number of clubs are struggling to attract a decent level of attendance, adding to the stress of ticket buying and match attending with such preposterous rules is driving even more supporters away. I know this as I am one of them.  Thirty years of following football through the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's have led to the 2000's being a time of cynicism and dislike towards the powers that be in the British game both south and north of the border.   Removing the hidden costs of following the game via booking fees could be one small way of attracting back floating fans but offering increased facilities to pay at the gate on the day of the game would encourage last minute fans to attend without them being made to feel like they are a security risk.   Equally if I decide at the last minute to attend a game I do not want to read on a club website that standing up is forbidden and could lead to me being thrown out.   I am hardly going to pay £22 to be thrown out of a ground by some unshaven male in an ill-fitting yellow jacket just because it makes him feel important.

We live in an era when there are prizes for everything in football; player of the season, best programme, the best pie or the most improved website. What clubs or even fans are not doing is putting a value on the key area of football – and that is the obligatory prize of value for money when you actually get inside. Next time you go to a game take a look at those alongside you.  A plethora of home Aberdeen  FC European matches in the UEFA cup against Bayern Munich, Moscow and Copenhagen brought flags, smoke and crackling atmospherics to the ground. Three days later a home league game saw fans looking bored and depressed again and flag displays were banned. Who are these people hidden people in positions of responsibility who are ruining the game. Every club has operation and security heads and they are often ex-policemen who still do the funny handshake just not in the uniform anymore.   From PC nobody who could not catch the cold they go from a life off on stress to a cushy number criminalising innocent fans who want to have a good time a football matches.  On the side of the security men, the hands of these people are  often tied.  The administrators at the higher echelons of the game are no better.  Politically correct rules and regultions are churned out before the start of every season and the list is so long even the Amazonian rain forests are being threatened when in actual fact writing these rules on tiolet paper would be more appropriate.   And you know the stuff we mean, annoying pc soundbites like 'please do not shout anything offensive; 'please do not call a player something bad.' Can they just not leave it at stop racist chanting rather than naming every supposedly persecuted minority in society.  

And it has got even worse for the Aberdeen fans eager to make some noise at Pittodrie Stadium. The club in its wisdom decided to ban all flags displays by home supporters supposedly in revenge for a supporter setting off a firework at a game against Celtic in Glasgow.   No one got hurt by the firework, not even a scratch but a mountain was made out of a molehill and some dim but nice supporter was criminalised by power hungry security chiefs eager to brown nose his police associates.    Now, Pittodire Stadium as a ground that looks as grey as most of the buildings in the city's main through fare Union Street.   The stadium is a cold November afternoon even when the sun is shining.   There often is an essence of negativity transmitted from what fans bother to turn up towards the players and it looks like getting worse.   It looks soulless, passion less and depressing.   Even an afternoon standing outside a crematorium can bring more cheer when its all going wrong.  Another problem in football is that of the modern fan base and that is particularly true of fans down south.   When modern football was invented by Rupert Murdoch in 1992, most twenty somethings at games today were barely out of primary school. Fast forward 16 years through the boom of English and Sky + football and we see footballers on seven-figure wages and English chairmen the exception to the rule of the modernised Premier League where Arabs and Americans rule our clubs.   Most modern fans in the twenty age group cannot recall a terracing never mind paying at the gate. The modern fan also does not see or appreciate the increasing gap between club and supporter, the acceptance of a security led match-day atmosphere and the decline of the working class fan.

So where are the old school fans these days and by that we mean the people who stood on the terraces and wore a scarf when it actually meant something.   A survey carried out by the Premier League last season revealed that the average age of a fan at a top-flight match is 43 so some of these people must yearn for a return to yesteryear.   But amongst the youth of today where are the sticker-collecting, Shoot magazine buying youngsters who crave the world their heroes inhabit like they did in my day in the 1980's? The problem and harsh reality is that they are now probably at home idolising Richard Keys, Andy Gray and Jamie Redknapp. Where once we had alcohol-fuelled, rowdy adolescents clad in trainers, jeans, Kappa kaghouls and meeting new friends on a Saturday, now we have fans in replica shirts in in pubs watching the games on television over a pint.  Going to the ground is secondary.     Having looked at pricing structures in football today it clearly takes a huge chunk of disposable income to follow a football club and prices are way beyond the reach of the younger poorer homes.    Even where people cannot do it they still find the money to spend on games.   Credit cards are maximised for the sake of a trip to a game and many choose to buy a season ticket and pay for it quarterly via a credit card. We can almost guarantee that a number of football fans have had to declare themselves bankrupt due to following football religiously and you can bet that the clubs will not be there to bail them out. Those whose salary is mainly absorbed by the great financial sponge that is the housing market and energy bills have little left over.   Food and football are often paid for by the credit card rather than cash. In the short term, atmospheres become less vibrant, with older fans – even if they still sing all game – generally more sceptical and pessimistic and stadiums are largely void of the naive enthusiasm of youth cultures so aparent in the 1980's.    Youth firms or football gangs were never really fully socially acceptable but today though it is even worse with any grouping at a game likely to be deemed a health hazzard or potential troublemakers.  In Scotland's new puritanical society things have got decreasingly worse  for us mere citizens.  The Scottish parliament is doing all it can to spoil even the smallest pleasures in life.  First you cannot smoke cigatettes; and now drinking alcohol is being almost criminalised.  All that is missing is swings being tied up in childrens playparks on a Sunday.   If the police forces and the Scottish Justice minister had his way the street lights would be switched off at 7pm every night.   Similarly inside the stadium has become a theatre for rules makers to practice enforcement.  Games are patrolled by greasy or long haired morons wearing yellow jackets masquerading as civilian 'security staff'.  Wearing headsets they parade up and down stadium walkways watching to see if anyone is blocking a path way as it might be a fire hazard.  And watch out if you are not sitting on a seat properly.  They might constitute criminal damage and be reported to the criminal law courts.  Where does it all end?  Next you will get followed into the ground tiolets to see if you have dribbled on the toilet seat or flushed the pan.  Ultras groups, or anyone pertaining to wish to be part of one is deemed a casual or un-family friendly.     Any that exist – such as with the Red Ultras at Aberdeen - are seen by clubs as potential troublemakers.  

Youngsters local to smaller clubs develop little or no bonds with their home town team as they used to and instead begin a phase of idolising Gerrard, Lampard and Ronaldo. Trips to football matches are a desire to see a game at Old Trafford thereby skipping a vital stage of the footballing rites of passage and becoming fickle, apathetic and yet loyal to your home town heroes whether on match day or via the internet chat fanzone.  In the long term, there is a much bigger problem for clubs to solve and that is that of the working-class fan who can no longer afford to attend as he once did or refuses to go because the atmosphere is non-existent. The solution is simple really, lower prices and many will return. Similarly clubs need to get the basics right within the stadium.   Fans do not want to see clowns walking around in stilts at half time as a means of entertainment. Growing groups of people want the European feel at games; that of flags, standing up, scarves and chanting as a unit, having a laugh as one voice against the system.    At some grounds the truth is that this is no more.  Equally if clubs don't watch it kids who have no discernible bond to the match-day experience by a certain age will not feel the need to visit local club games even if prices eventually tumble. There only attachment to the game coming through a fondness for watching Ronaldo at Manchester United on TV or via playing X-Box 2008 Fifa World Cup.Younger fans increasingly know little of what it is to be an active supporter of a club that has a history beyond the Premier League. Histories that were the foundation of football’s popularity and mass appeal means nothing to a great deal of people. Predominately in England but Scotland is catching up, what makes football 'football' is gradually being eroded deep within the game by police, clubs, stewards, administrators and ruling association bodies.   We see some hope with people like Platini but he is not that powerful.   Too many individual national associations have too much power and influence. As the game continues to whore itself out to business, controlling petty beaucratic police rules and at Premiership level 'mild celebrity,' it is carelessly underestimating the importance of its core traditional fan base who are sick and tired of the new regulations and attitudes dominating. There is nothing more frustrating than having contempt for those who control the one thing you have truly loved all your life.  

Revolution in football watching may not be in the air just yet, but you can always dream.