Prepare for the Premiership Ticket Price Surge

[Macmoish]

Wonder what QPR will do to ticket prices if/when we get promotion (assuming Loftus Road stay

Mail/Derek Hunter

Arsenal to create football history by charging landmark price for match-day seat

Arsenal may have been founded as a team for factory staff and featured as an iconic working-class club in the film of Nick Hornby's best-seller Fever Pitch, but they are about to take another giant step away from their traditional, core support.

The cost of an 'ordinary' seat for a Premier League game at the Emirates Stadium in the New Year is poised to break the £100 barrier - which would make them the most expensive non-hospitality seats in the history of English football. It will also push ticket prices into a frightening new era.

Even after years of becoming accustomed to the top flight's 'prawn sandwich brigade', the struggle of ordinary fans to pay for admission can only get harder once the landmark price has been reached as a result of the planned rise of VAT to 20 per cent on January 4.

Arsenal could choose to absorb the tax rise and not pass it on to fans, but there has been no indication yet that supporters will be spared the hike.

The club's website booking page warns: 'Please note that, with the VAT increase due in January 2011, our matchday ticket prices will be subject to change.'

Malcolm Clarke, chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation, said: 'A £100 ticket in the present climate is ridiculous. It is proof that football is not living in the same world as the rest of us.
'The game has more money going into it than ever before and it is not helping fans. Football is no longer a game that is readily accessible to all sections of the community.'

The Premier League has become a rich man's playground in recent years, with foreign owners ploughing money in at the top and fans footing a share of the bill at the bottom.

The English game has changed a great deal since standing was banned at top-flight stadia in 1994.

But the image of swathes of working-class fans on Highbury's North Bank in the 1997 film Fever Pitch seems a world away from Arsenal's potential new level of pricing, which would come into effect from the home game against Manchester City on January 5.

Grounds for concern: Emirates will have the priciest 'ordinary' ticket in English football
A £100 ticket would make watching Arsenal 11 times more expensive than following Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund. The German team charge just £9 for their cheapest seat.

'Prices have risen way beyond the rate of inflation, and the bigger clubs have gone the furthest over the last decade,' added Clarke.

The most expensive normal seats at the Emirates Stadium - in the centre of the upper tier for 'category A' games against popular opponents - are £94 per person, plus a booking fee of up to £2.30 and £2.20 postage.

That makes £98.50 for a typical purchase. But, with VAT rising from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent, that ticket would break the £100 barrier for the first time.

No club can afford to charge such prices throughout their grounds and stay busy, and Arsenal have a wide range of prices, from £48 to £94 for 'Category A' games against top opposition such as Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham.

It costs from £33 to £66 for Premier League games against lesser sides but the bill for a family of four could still top their weekly food shopping bill.

Arsenal, who are repaying the debt from building the £390million stadium, are already the most expensive club to watch on their own ground in Britain by some margin, and a recession is not perhaps the ideal time to be breaking the £100 barrier.

Season ticket-holder and author Tom Watt said: 'It does seem an extraordinary amount of money.
'If somebody can afford to pay that fair play to them but, while people complain about a lot of things at Arsenal, value for money is not one of them.'

Arsenal's cheapest adult season ticket for 2010-11 cost £893, while their most expensive 'ordinary' season ticket, which has no hospitality, was £1,825. Liverpool were the next most expensive for 2010-11 at £680, followed by Tottenham (£650), West Ham (£585) and Chelsea (£550).

Blackburn had the cheapest adult season ticket at £224 - just over twice the cost of a single highend ticket at the Emirates.

The club with the next most expensive single ticket price in England is Tottenham, where the most expensive 'normal' seat is £76 per game, which will increase to £78 when VAT rises in January, according to Spurs' official website.

The most expensive ordinary seat at Chelsea costs £73, and at Manchester United just £49.

www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1331625/Arsenal-create-football-history-charging-landmark-price-match-day-seat.html#ixzz15tuV9AJi

[Lonegunmen]

no game is worth 100 pound....well perhap an FA Cup Final but for EPL games that max price should be 40 quid. TV etc are ploughing more than enough into the game. Greedy player wages and greedier agent percentages are for the most part of what is making and keeping the game expensive.

[The Scooter]

Poor research. Man Utd's top price "ordinary" ticket is £75. Cheapest ticket away fans can buy for Cat A games at Old Trafford is £55 this season.

The £76 ticket at Spurs applies only to 515 available seats from a capacity of 36,250. Average ticket price at White Hart Lane and Stamford Bridge is £36 for an adult (still too dear mind)........with cheapest seats at £27. Demand still significantly outweighs supply.

[ingham]

Arsenal seem to me to be living in an unreal world.

We hear all the time how their new stadium confers on them a unique advantage, but the evidence says otherwise, in terms of attendances (not the biggest) and successes (none worth mentioning in the damn thing). And their much praised finances seem in large part to be due to their refusal to spend heavily on the sort of players who brought Ferguson 3 titles and Chelsea 1 in the 4 years Arsenal have completed at a Ground named after someone else's business.

Once upon a time - and it is just an impression - Arsenal, along with United, had the cheapest seats in the old First Division, if not the League. At least, that's how I remember it, which may be wrong. They were certainly not the most expensive.

So I find their mindset vaguely interesting to study (even if I never see them play, except for watching the Spurs winger skating past their full back in the last 10 minutes or so of yet another triumph for the Gooners on Saturday).

Things change, and they may change in Arsenal's favour. But like most Clubs, they still seem to be very susceptible to the idea that they CAN ONLY change in their favour.

Between the 1953 title success and George Graham's couple of wins at the end of the 1980s, 35 years elapsed with only a single title victory to show.

A similar failure to deliver the top prize now for a comparable period - if the Premiership shambles lasts that long - could prove confusing for them, as one of the hardest things to do is to understand when you are in decline. Especially for those whose egos and self-interest are bound up with the status quo.

As we know only too well.

What they say is intelligent, reasonable and should work. What they do doesn't entirely correspond with the principles they uphold.

Especially those prices.