Earlier this week news broke that Manchester City had returned 900 tickets after fans refused to pay £62 to watch their team play at Arsenal on Sunday. As FSF Chair Malcolm Clarke put it, “football isn’t immune from the economic situation and just because City have a lot of money it doesn’t mean their supporters have.” A sentiment echoed at many clubs up and down the country.
Match-going fans all too often must pay through the nose to watch their team. The problem is particularly acute for away fans who must also cover the additional costs of transport, food and refreshments that come with following your team across the country. This season has seen Blues fans charged £36.00 for an away match at Elland Road in October.
Reports suggest that the Premier League is exploring the idea of an away fans’ fund – this sounds like a welcome initiative and one of many potential options that we would be pleased to explore with them. Of course high prices affect supporters in all leagues, and solutions must be found for those fans too.
In the last few days there have been many petitions and local campaigns aiming to bring away ticket prices down to a more affordable level. This feels like a real watershed moment when fans across the country are willing to put aside club differences to speak with one voice. Why can’t our football clubs employ similar schemes as those found in many European countries, most notably Germany?
With that in mind the Football Supporters’ Federation will next week announce the first in a series of meetings across the country to see what fans can do to make football more affordable; something Blues Trust hopes to attend in order to add some weight to the debate and hopefully influence the policy and pricing setters within the game, who for so long, seem to have ignored any economic pressure the very people that make the game come alive find themselves in.
The Premier League Away Fund is a joke.
It is tokenism as usual from them towards fans and the lower league clubs, while they protect the big clubs and their own gravy train.
Why not just have a fixed maximum price for each league.
Recently we have Huddersfield and Charlton just up from League One who want £25 for Championship football and Burnley want £27, they are having a laugh, football is such poor value these days, i’ve had enough.
There is so much money in football, billions, yet the prem keeps it all and the fans in any league are riped off. I’ve stopped going and it’s time all away fans stopped going, even just for a couple of months would be a shock to these clubs / leagues.
I can take the family to the cinema for the price of one Championship match ticket, players greed and the leagues failure to control their greed is slowly killing the game.
My children aren’t interested in football and i see that as a good thing, it’s football’s loss.
Not sure about Germany, i hear different stories and below are links for
VfB Stuttgart vs FC Bayern München (9th vs 1st) and the cheapest ticket is 36 euro’s about £30, so not that good a value.
http://www.vfb.de/en/
https://ssl.vfb.de/tickets/default.php?cPath=1_328_429_431