Written by Gooner in Exile
Football fans are an interesting breed, we tend to be very introspective and look after our own backyard without looking at the bigger picture that surrounds us. The 6% increase has been met with calls for the Board to spend it, and that fans are being priced out of the game.
The rise has also met with comparisons to Manchester United and how they won the league yet charge a lot less for tickets, despite the obvious fact they would get a reduced crowd if they charged more, its an expensive trip from Surrey to add on to a ticket price and there is also the small fact that they do not occupy an area with the best local economy.
This season I have paid £35 for a restricted view (about 5 rows back from a pillar) at Goodison Park, £33 for a seat in Birmingham and £25 for a seat at the JJB. A varied range of prices but as we all know away fans are never given the cheap home seats, to really measure ticket prices at the Emirates we have to compare them to our London neighbours.
Therefore I have looked at Chelsea, Spurs and West Ham prices to gauge whether we are fairly treated or otherwise as fans. Chelsea have already published their 2011/12 prices, West Ham, Arsenal or Spurs have not. It is much harder to compare Season Tickets as some include cup games, some don’t and some don’t include cup games but you are charged when the game arises whether you go or not. West Ham will be irrelevant next year as they have announced a decrease due to slipping out of the Premier League.
First off lets look at the top and bottom price tickets in all stadiums for all clubs. I have only compared standard Adult ticket prices for the Premier League (Chelsea operate a different pricing structure for all rounds of CL and Domestic Cups). All teams operate a grading system to charge fans. (For the sake of these tables I have added 6.5% on to Arsenal’s 2010/11 prices)
Clearly there is not much difference between the prices, also Chelsea’s cheapest ticket is for a Family Enclosure section, the next cheapest ticket is £47 for Cat B, and £51 for Cat A.
Now there is the question of whether we have more or less Cat A games than the others.
Assuming nothing changes next year and West Ham are replaced with QPR by the other London clubs Arsenal fans get to see more games at the Cat B prices than both Chelsea and Spurs.
Now the final question is the quantity of tickets at these lower prices, as I mentioned above the Chelsea cheap seats are very limited. Also despite Arsenal charging a higher amount in the top tiers there is rather a large section of cheap prices.
When looking at the London clubs it would seem fair to exercise a cut off of £40 as being a reasonably cheap admission price. These only occur in Cat B matches or lower so that is where this comparison is based.
Look how many more fans get to see games at the Emirates for less than £40 than at our local rivals.
If the Arsenal board were unscrupulous they could probably add £10 on to every seat price and still have a full stadium, after all football supporting is an affliction not a choice and none of us are going to choose to go to Spurs or Chelsea if they were cheaper, but the simple fact is us Arsenal fans don’t get too bad a deal when it comes to ticket prices and availability.
Like I said 6% you’re really quite fair.
Arsenal News 24/7
arsenalarsenal.net 
Okay before I get kicked out of Accountants Anonymous I screwed up the Spuds figures. 😳
Cat C 6 games, Cat B 7 games.
Therefore they let in 234000 at less than £40.
Here here!
Are you working for the club or are you an idiot?
Great article GiE.
There is too much emphasis from “fans” in the blogosphere using woolly figures and paranoia to ensure the price hike is making such “fans” feel like victims of the Arsenal corporate machine when really, as you’ve shown we’re just sheep following the trend.
WG
(I’m not entirely convinced that makes sense, but it’s early)
I dont care about what deals other clubs are getting,I’m talking about Arsenal.
How can they charge me £1150.00 to watch what we have been watching,No heart and no desire is not good enough.
I will only be happy paying prices like this when,our players look like they give a dam and not bottle it everytime we get to the crunch…We aint asking for no £50 million signing’s,we just want a team of men not boys.
Good research.
Although, however ‘fair’ it may look in comparison, surely it’s more of a reflection that football as a whole is taking the piss when it comes to ticket pricing.
I don’t know what you do for a living but I imagine that a lot of those that fill out the Emirates take a huge hit financially to watch the club. People will pay as long as they can afford it but less and less people can these days. In these tough times, paying this much money to watch football isn’t actually fair at all.
@ Islington
The whole point of the article is that although Arsenal are very expensive IMO, they are only as expensive as the next team down the road and therefore you aren’t being fleeced, merely being forced to pay the going rate for Premiership Football.
WG
Must be an idiot aj, did you read the article?
Islington Gooner….they can because if you won’t pay it others will. I’d take your ticket right now thanks very much.
Well done GIE, that took some work to research, be prepared that will get the cynics at it, as I have said before this years rises are reasonable and your post only reinforces that view.
AS Oscar Wild famously said “Cynics know the price of everything and the value of nothing”
BR Re your concise comments this morning on the previous post Re football as an obsession and not just about winning and the reaction to it, I now feel as though I am preaching to the converted in many instances,, thank you and well done
Jez you’re right football is pricing out the fans, Gazidis has said as much, but also this is not an overnight thing.
I remember paying £7 to stand on the North Bank and in a few years that becoming £20 when we were sitting in the North Bank. Then I remember not being able to get a ticket at all at Highbury, and now I can get any number of Ticket Exchange tickets.
A night at the opera is probably cheaper than a football match, but like I say its been happening for a while, I object to the 6% being used as a stick to beat the club with, when looking at the wider picture we are not relatively hard done by. West Ham paid that money to see their team go down, Spuds paid it to see their team go backwards in the PL, Chavs are being fleeced (although they always have been) to try and bring the clubs revenues up.
Thanks DanDan, WG, I was well prepared to batten down the hatches today.
So far not too unreasonable, but theres a long day left
@ GiE
I’d put your tin hat on and sit under a table. 🙂
WG
You can try to justify the price rise by saying as you did that other clubs charge as much as we do or by saying that we haven’t had a price raise for 3 years but at the end of the day it doesn’t work like that. We’re in the middle of the worse economic downturn for decades so fans have less money to spend whilst at the club seems more and more to prefer profit making over success. I think the telling statistic is that the profit the club will gain from the price rises is approximately what we would have made had we finished 3rd rather than 4th. A position that was completely and utterly within our capabilities. If the team can’t be arsed to make that little effort then why should fans be happy about paying the extra…
@Tinyspuds
Because if you are a fan you’d pay anything to see them play and the actual financial difference in cost isn’t that much. If you paid last year then chances are you will do so again.
WG
What are you all talking about we are similar in prices in the cheap CAT B category and more expensive in all the other catergories so we are not paying the same as other clubs are we? CAT A top seat is £100 which is £30 quid dearer than anybody else and the most expensive seat for normal fans in World football.
Inside the stafdium it is £3.70 a pint and £4 for a pie.
The problems with the prices are real but the main problem for me is that we dont spend any money on the team if we did i could swallow the high prices and the huge profilts we boast about every year make it seem that the price increase is because they can not because they need to.
2005-2006 Highbury ticket prices £30-£54.
I love the internet waybackmachine
We were winning then and no one complained about prices…..
Morning all- sorry I have been so absent- been busy mainly having fun 🙂
I take your point GiE that the rise is not ridiculous- however, my upper tier season ticket renewal is £1395 up from £1320. I was already struggling to make it and it pushes the “per game” price to a little over £54 from around £50 last season. 7 of those £54 games are our first 7 cup games including a rubbish qualifier of the CL! I am trying to move to the lower tier where the season ticket is just shy of a grand, but anyone familiar with the layout of the ground will see there are many fewer seats in the lowest tier than there are in the highest. My chances have been put at “highly unlikely” by the automatic website message!
So my point is that the percentage price rise in itself is not out of order but the starting price for the tickets is in many cases too high and the fact that many of those games are hard to get excited about at that price is damaging and will lead to more tickets being flogged to bankers and tourists making the ground atmosphere even more sterile than it is now.
Finally, I have some sympathy with those who argue that the club should have done better on its commercial deals and then they wouldn’t have to ask the loyal fanbase to cough up even more of their hard-earned.
I’m not really in a bad mood but it’s tough to justify this expense to the wife and then come home complaining that the atmosphere was crap- her inevitable question is, “why don’t you spend that money taking us somewhere posh on holiday instead” 😉
Matt how many seats are sold at £100? We have a bigger stadium and a bigger range of tickets, even if you look at Cat A, the club offer more tickets at the bottom end than their competitors. Its expensive across the board Arsenal is not (as some would have you believe) an exception.
No one forces you to buy a pint and a pie in ground, there are plenty of pubs nearby that’ll sell you a pint for less than £3.70…although not much less. And also plenty of food choices.
Do you know what other clubs charge for food and beer? No because you don’t pay it every week, the point being that we are very inward looking we care about our club and not what others are paying or what we could pay elsewhere, but if we all felt like that we’d all go to watch non league football and the PL stadiums would be empty.
I’m sure if you looked at the actual prices charged by others we would see similarities in all areas, programmes are pretty much £5 wherever you go, replica shirts are £40-£50, the club is adopting the policy of its marketplace competitors.
I tried to keep the numbers and facts to a minimum, but Cat A discrepancy is not as wide as the bottom and top prices indicate.
Carlito you are right of course the starting point is high, but my point it is everywhere.
In fact there are only 2,000 more Upper tier seats than lower tier, most of that excess goes on sale to Red Members and is right up the back. Upper 26,646, Lower 24,425, 9,290 in Club Level and Boxes.
The problem for season tickets stems from the fact that by FA rules for FA Cup games 25% of the ground must be offered to the opposition. Therefore they can only sell 75% of the ground as Season Tickets, I’m sure most ST holders will say I don’t want them so exclude FA Cup games, problem being when Chelsea or Liverpool get drawn against us in the Quarter Final and want to take the whole end there will be ST holders unable to get a seat.
They should make the standard allocation of away fans upper tier though which would provide more space for ST holders in the lower tier (who would have to be relocated for the rare FA Cup games)
Great post GiE, the devil is in the detail with these sort of topics, and as already can be seen from the comments above and your replies, it is an area you are very comfortable with.
Watching live football has become very expensive, and as you pointed out, Arsenal play in London where it is easy to find fans capable/mad enough to pay the money. Ultimately, the 6% price increase is just another vehicle for fans to vent their anger and disappointment in Arsenal’s perceived underperformance this season.
It’s suply and demand and I know it’s obvious to everyone but as long as people are paying they will charge. A friend of mine who earns not much more than minimun wage has the cheapest season ticket and he says that spending 10% of your income on somethimg you love is no big deal. 2.5% is vat anyway. Arsenal are the only club to reduce prices for CC (as far as I know) I was speaking to an Ipswich fan outside the tavern and he told me he had to pay £35 for the (his) home leg. The emirates game was £10.
GIE,Thats so funny now that all the renwals are in.
But how comes when i was trying to sell my season ticket for this year,I had intrest but no cash.
Its all talk,i know of at least 10 fans who couldnt get a buyer and we tried selling it for months through various blogs and friends and the place i work and even sent that out to thousands of people and guess what,no buyers.
No total Arsenal,Its not easy to make up money and watch football.
Adding my season ticket on to my mortgage and adding that to,loads of other bills,Its bloody hard mate.
The cost of living goes up,Why my wage’s stay the same.I love Arsenal to death,But the real fans are being squeezed out.
The team was a disgrace this season and the effort the team showed,Was embarrisng to a great club like Arsenal.We must not accept that!!!
IG……I wouldn’t buy off of another ST holder to be fair….why would I? What happens if you decide you want it again….can you take it straight back.
I have to factor in a £30 train fare to every home game which means the only way I can commit to it is if I share it with my brother and dad and we split it over the season.
Very informative post GiE. As GM say, it’s all about supply and demand and the ‘business’ that is Arsenal.
If we’d won something last season, no-one would have a problem with ticket prices. I hope the management realise that although creating a family atmosphere encourages a certain type of fan, it does not come close to the beneficial effect of performing on the pitch as that will encourage all supporters.
Doesn’t seem possible that I used to stand on the north bank for 25p the train fare was more than the entrance fee. My salary then £390 per Annum and my mum took £104 of that.
Rasp actually your comment inadvertently hits on something that I think the club could improve on.
You used the phrase family atmosphere in the same context as the club, ie safe, comfortable etc.
I think there is scope for the club to learn a lot from our London counterparts (Fulham spring to mind) and some of the other PL teams in terms of setting good prices for children who go with their parents especially those who get a ST. These fans are the future and as such need to be encouraged into the ground.
Islington G, I do understand your point of view re the enormous cost of a season ticket whilst cost of living is increasing rapidly and salary increases, if at all, are neglectable. It is a tough time to be a Gooner on a limited budget.
… And how much more money do Chelsea, Man United, Chelsea, Spurs and all the rest spend compared to us?
Pathetic article!
Hope you enjoy spending thosands of your hard earned cash on them mugs at the Bowl next season… This Gooner, after 15 years of having a ST, has been priced out! But don’t worry, it’s fair…
BELL END!
So Noise are you complaining about being priced out or the money not being spent?
Being priced out is happening at every club not just Arsenal and I don’t agree with it. BUT for the 6% increase to be used as a stick to beat the team with is unfair considering market forces.
Many fans were priced out last year or the year before, you were lucky to have clung on so long. Inflation has been high for two/three years now wages have frozen.
I can’t afford a ST or rather can’t justify it to my wife, I only got one way back in the first days of all seater (because my Dad bought a pair) and gave it up two years later because I couldn’t use it.
Do I think I get bad value for money when I do go? No I get to see my team play and it is a highlight of the month for me win lose or draw.
GIE, While many would believe that it’s low cost seats or winning teams that fills stadiums, in the end result it’s really demand that is the determining factor.
A great example of this would be the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team they have won nothing since 1967 yet the arena is always full and they never have a problem selling private boxes or season tickets.
Over the years the type of attendee has changed dramatically, it’s moved from the rabid supporter who would die for the team to a more laid back, but still loud, audience who are happy to be entertained and watch a great spectacle.
The teams attendance revenue has moved away from individual supporters to a corporate based income where the attendees spend more time munching and drinking then they do watching hockey.
Seems to me that this is exactly what is happening at Arsenal and the club are willing to lose supporters who complain about the price of a ticket. After all (from a purely business perspective) why would they want to keep fans who can barely afford a ticket when there is a queue of people willing ready, and able to snap up the tickets.
Seems cruel and heartless from the “old fashioned fans” viewpoint but it looks like the change to a family/corporate attendee is well under way – and to be successful the club has to evolve.
Although I feel for the fans that cant go through Price, this has always been the way through natural progression. Single people went because they had the spare cash, Then left home got a partner/wife mortgage/rent kids and no longer had the disposable income to finance such an extravagance.
Hopefully to return in later life as they progressed through a career or the kids grew up.
How about sympathising with all the parents who cant pursue their dreams because after having done all that, they now have to become the bank of Mum and Dad because the kids cant support the families they have created. There are worse thing than not being able to afford a season ticket.
Also, you have to bear in mind that every single seat at Spuds SHL is a restricted view! you can’t get away from them.
😀
Thats a very valid point Andy Mack 🙂
The chavs and mancs don’t have a waiting list.
Denilson and bendy look certain to leave. We must be buying. Exciting times maybe.
So Odemwinge is allegedly a target, clearly he stuffed some goals past us this year, but what do we all think to him.
Personally I liked what I saw of him this year, pacy and a good eye for goal. Big step up though?
Swap deal for Vela?
GIE, 🙂
A brave Post because it is acting like a lightning conductor to those fans who are disgruntled with the lack of trophies.
The price increase, as you point out, is not unreasonable, but it is undoubtedly true that for a fan, struggling to justify the price of a ticket, the disappointing collapse in the last 8 games of last season just added salt to the wound.
Linking the price increase, or cost of the ticket to the lack of spending is a non sequitur, but, if you are feeling cheesed off, the tendency is to complain about anything and everything.
Fans unhappy about the cost of a ticket can always refuse to buy it, but I bet their will always be 60,000, each game, at the Emirates next season, so market forces indicate many others do not find the cost prohibitive.
That’s tough on the fan struggling in the present economic climate, and there are many of them, but life is not fair, is it?
If it was fair RedA we would have had none of this nonsense and would be snuggling up to four lovely bits of silverware every night. 😦
Hi RA, I have noticed there is a strong correlation between the amount of money fans spent on Arsenal and their level of dissatisfaction. We are all disappointed about the way the season ended, but those who had season tickets and went to a lot of away games – so spend in the region of £2500-£3000 this season – seem significantly more disappointed. Their unhappiness is more about the perceived lack of quality players being purchased, and the attitude of some of our players who are not deemed to be worthy of wearing the shirt, than the ticket price increases.
Except for a few away games every season, and the odd home game if and when I can get a ticket, my financial investment in Arsenal is limited. I can understand that those fans who pay big sums of money every season feel, as you call it, a bit cheesed off.
I’m so pleased murray is getting trashed 🙂
Anyone else got the friday feeling?
All I can think of is beer, bbq and sunshine!
My work is suffering.
WG
Me too WG altho all I can think of is a 7 hour drive to the opposite side of the country tomorrow for my holiday in south west Wales.
TA if only the investment was just financial, unfortunately it’s bloody emotional too.
Well, there is no accusing you of being stuck in the past N5.
Where is SW Wales are you going?
I agree GiE, it is bloody emotional too, of course. But when I started to reason with a friend of mine, who together with his wife (both season ticket holders) have spent between £5-6k this year on Arsenal, that there are still plenty of positives to take from this season, I felt a bit sheepish. This guy is a longterm fan, and quite level-headed but absolutely livid at the way the team (non)performed at the end of the season. If you spend that sort of money is hard to be philosophical, and more is involved than emotion alone.
A village called Abereiddy in-between Porthgain and Fishguard
Hi everyone. Maybe if fans keep getting priced-out by our growing Corporate monster, we could do a Wimledon or FC United and start a new club, starting in the lower leagues. Wimbledon are back in the league, so with the right people and structure it can be done.
Its an idyllic notion HCAA, I think the reason Wimbledon have succeeded is due to literally being disenfranchised when they moved the old club to Milton Keynes. It’s a fantastic success for those fans.
I am not aware of how well FC Utd are doing.
Are Barcelona owned by their fans GiE?
According to Wiki its an Association not a Limited Company, as such no one can buy shares, so I suppose in a way it is, as is Bilbao, Madrid, Osasuna.
Apparently at the end of 2010 season it had a debt of €442million, i don’t know if that means the members are now responsible for €2,600 each.
Barca have just signed the most lucrative shirt deal in footbal with Qatar holdings. No wonder guardiola backed the qatar bid.
That’ll sort out the debt then…..thought that space was reserved for charity?
London,
You’re correct I’m not stuck in the past but frankly my position might be very different if I were one of the supporters being priced out of a seat.
It’s easier to be rational from afar.
Nasri, Sagna and Diaby started for France against Belarus today. Diaby was captain! I only saw the first half but all three played well against a feisty Belarus.
Very well researched and written post. Brings an important perspective to the discussion on the price hike.
Morning all,
New post……..