Everything that could be written in ten days about football
ticket prices has been written in the last ten days and, with that in mind,
have some more related content.
There is a more or less universal feeling that football is
overpriced – if not ticketing, then all that comes with it; food, drink,
replica shirts are all marked up football fans with, conversely, the quality
going down (the Carlsberg and Fosters served at football grounds is somehow
less appetising than it is normally).
Paradoxically, as a lapsed fan who does not go to many
Reading homes games now as they cost too much for me, I feel as if ticket costs
at the Madejski aren’t that bad – they’re too expensive for me in the sense
there is more now I’d rather spend 25 quid on than watching another season of
rudderless mediocrity.
If memory serves, tickets for matches when Reading were in
the Premier League were similarly sensibly priced, despite the fact in a
24,000-seater stadium, the club could probably have got away with charging almost
as much as they would like.
Furthermore, the young person’s season ticket introduced this
year is also a massive step forward – if I had been a year younger, one would
certainly now sit in my wallet.
Reading still have the wider football problem of overpriced
tat and dubious quality food and drink, but the bottom line is you don’t have
to pay for those, it is a choice (unless you have kids I suppose) and if one
had to opt between relatively low ticket prices and low-cost extras, the
preferred option should be obvious.
And, for non-season ticket holders like myself, the last
week of this month allows you to go to three games in a week for £15 – a bloody
good deal if ever there was one. £10 for a home FA Cup tie, a home freebie for
friends of season ticket holders via a Reading scheme (a curious attempt to re-brand
TFI – or The Fan Initiative) and £5 for an away day at Charlton Athletic,
courtesy of an initiative run by the South London club.
All cheap, all good PR, everyone’s a winner.
However, the rub is, how many tickets would be sold for a
cup tie against West Brom, a Tuesday night home league game against Rotherham
and, from Charlton’s point of view, a match against a resolutely mid-table
outfit, albeit while in a relegation battle, if tickets were priced normally?
From there, different tactics have to be used to sell
tickets as the supply simply will not there – 13,000 for each of Reading’s home
games in that week would be a reasonable target one imagines. In a 24,000
capacity ground.
Ergo, extra efforts have to be made to get people into the
stadium and this fans vs customers argument works both ways; the cheaper it is,
the more likely it will get your custom. Many economics terms sit uneasily in
the realm of sport, but supply and demand works to an extent, especially if you’re
not a fan of a Premier League regular where the lesser demand means fans who
get fleeced will stop going and not come back or be replaced and the
accountants are aware of this.
So, if Reading’s three games in a week were a cup tie
against Manchester City and two Premier League games against say Newcastle and
Aston Villa (two sides also in relegation battles like Rotherham and Charlton),
that £15 fee for three games would probably be increased by 500%.
No harsh words should be levelled at clubs which slash
ticket prices and run schemes to get more fans in their ground, especially
kids, teenagers and people in their early 20s, but the wider context has to be
appreciated that would these initiatives be run if most matches so far that
season had been played at stadiums 90% sold out?
One suspects not.
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