A Grade A rip-off
2 October 2012
By Matthew Bazell, author of 'Theatre Of Silence: The Lost Soul of Football'
Many of you reading this will be on a daily wage of somewhere between £63 and £103. If so, please contemplate how your typical working day goes, along with the hassle of travel. Your reward for that day’s shift is being able to afford one Grade A game of football at the Emirates. It might be a good match, it might not be. Either way you’ll have to sacrifice a whole day’s income to be there.
How did we get to this point? I wonder if the newer breed of fan realises that Arsenal, traditionally, were a great value football club. Some of them would probably be surprised to learn that a season ticket to the North Bank terrace at the start of the 1990s wasn’t that far off the £103 mark. Even by 1998, a ticket to watch Arsenal play a perceived Grade A club could be purchased for £14 with the highest priced ticket in the region of £45.
My Dad used to take me to the odd away game in London during the late 1980s and early 1990s; you’d notice that admission elsewhere was dearer than at Highbury. Parents today, who take their children to Arsenal home games, are not only faced with the highest ticket prices in the capital, but the entire country.
Not that rest of the clubs in this land can be defended for their pricing structure. Are the BSM pointing the finger solely at Arsenal here? No, absolutely not – the prices our away fans are being charged is simply outrageous; £45 for Stoke, £49 for Man City, £50 for West Ham, the list goes on with Spurs, Fulham and Chelsea set to top the list with prices of £60+.
We’ve got to this point because the game is cleverly marketed as out-and-out entertainment; a bit like going to the theatre which is now commonly used as a comparison to football. Some of us take strong issue with that perception of the game’s culture, as we see football as a way of life, not a privilege where you have to pick and choose which games you go to.
A comparison with an entertainment industry like theatre is deceptive for three reasons. Firstly, the very simple reason that theatre is actually cheaper than football! Okay, the most expensive tickets at a show will be comparable with Premier League prices, but the lowest prices are relatively affordable. For example, this summer I paid £20 to watch Danny De Vito star in a production at the Savoy theatre. As it turned out there were a few unsold tickets in the stalls so they upgraded me to the top seats for no extra charge. No football club would ever do such a thing for their loyal followers.
Secondly, your chances of seeing a great show are far higher than seeing a great football match. West End productions are not just randomly released in hope that they are good. In general, the audience will leave the average show feeling great and any production that cannot provide a high degree of audience satisfaction will go bust in a matter of weeks. Most football clubs do not provide audience satisfaction the majority of the time. How entertaining was the Grade A priced 0-0 draw with Chelsea last season? In hindsight would you have paid even £5 to watch that lifeless stalemate?
The third reason is that you don’t go to the theatre every week out of irrational blind loyalty.
“You go to the show yesterday?”
“Yeah it was shit”
“Oh, you going next week?”
“Yeah might as well. It’s been a crap production all year, but maybe next week it will improve”
Would you sacrifice a day’s wages to watch a film? As far as good value for money goes, modern football just doesn’t provide it, especially when you base the cost of your ticket on other things you could have bought.
Just think about how much music you could buy with funds of £62, or for the four figure price of a season ticket. That’s a lot of music and hours of entertainment. Also take into consideration that if you were disappointed with a choice of purchase you made, a shop like HMV will allow you to take the product back so that you can exchange it. If football clubs had a similar policy, then the game between Arsenal v Chelsea last season would have had 60,000 refunds.
By Matthew Bazell, author of 'Theatre Of Silence: The Lost Soul of Football'
Many of you reading this will be on a daily wage of somewhere between £63 and £103. If so, please contemplate how your typical working day goes, along with the hassle of travel. Your reward for that day’s shift is being able to afford one Grade A game of football at the Emirates. It might be a good match, it might not be. Either way you’ll have to sacrifice a whole day’s income to be there.
How did we get to this point? I wonder if the newer breed of fan realises that Arsenal, traditionally, were a great value football club. Some of them would probably be surprised to learn that a season ticket to the North Bank terrace at the start of the 1990s wasn’t that far off the £103 mark. Even by 1998, a ticket to watch Arsenal play a perceived Grade A club could be purchased for £14 with the highest priced ticket in the region of £45.
My Dad used to take me to the odd away game in London during the late 1980s and early 1990s; you’d notice that admission elsewhere was dearer than at Highbury. Parents today, who take their children to Arsenal home games, are not only faced with the highest ticket prices in the capital, but the entire country.
Not that rest of the clubs in this land can be defended for their pricing structure. Are the BSM pointing the finger solely at Arsenal here? No, absolutely not – the prices our away fans are being charged is simply outrageous; £45 for Stoke, £49 for Man City, £50 for West Ham, the list goes on with Spurs, Fulham and Chelsea set to top the list with prices of £60+.
We’ve got to this point because the game is cleverly marketed as out-and-out entertainment; a bit like going to the theatre which is now commonly used as a comparison to football. Some of us take strong issue with that perception of the game’s culture, as we see football as a way of life, not a privilege where you have to pick and choose which games you go to.
A comparison with an entertainment industry like theatre is deceptive for three reasons. Firstly, the very simple reason that theatre is actually cheaper than football! Okay, the most expensive tickets at a show will be comparable with Premier League prices, but the lowest prices are relatively affordable. For example, this summer I paid £20 to watch Danny De Vito star in a production at the Savoy theatre. As it turned out there were a few unsold tickets in the stalls so they upgraded me to the top seats for no extra charge. No football club would ever do such a thing for their loyal followers.
Secondly, your chances of seeing a great show are far higher than seeing a great football match. West End productions are not just randomly released in hope that they are good. In general, the audience will leave the average show feeling great and any production that cannot provide a high degree of audience satisfaction will go bust in a matter of weeks. Most football clubs do not provide audience satisfaction the majority of the time. How entertaining was the Grade A priced 0-0 draw with Chelsea last season? In hindsight would you have paid even £5 to watch that lifeless stalemate?
The third reason is that you don’t go to the theatre every week out of irrational blind loyalty.
“You go to the show yesterday?”
“Yeah it was shit”
“Oh, you going next week?”
“Yeah might as well. It’s been a crap production all year, but maybe next week it will improve”
Would you sacrifice a day’s wages to watch a film? As far as good value for money goes, modern football just doesn’t provide it, especially when you base the cost of your ticket on other things you could have bought.
Just think about how much music you could buy with funds of £62, or for the four figure price of a season ticket. That’s a lot of music and hours of entertainment. Also take into consideration that if you were disappointed with a choice of purchase you made, a shop like HMV will allow you to take the product back so that you can exchange it. If football clubs had a similar policy, then the game between Arsenal v Chelsea last season would have had 60,000 refunds.
