Yes, in an ideal world we would all want everything to be as cheap as possible and in today’s climate that couldn’t be more true, however unlike most things at the moment surely football can afford to charge less.
As someone who has been supporting their club home and away for the best part of the last five years or so I have spent more money on football than I’d like to think. However over the last few seasons it has become noticeably more and more expensive to do so.
I am amongst many fans in being a firm believer of the ’20 is plenty’ notion meaning that £20 for an adult away ticket is more than enough money to charge fans. If you then multiply that by the amount of away league games in an EFL season that’s still a whopping £460 which is more than the average season ticket price in the championship alone.
Once you take into consideration the cost of travel on top of this you are looking at close to £1000 just to see your team away from home for a whole season and that is with a £20 cap on ticket prices. Now imagine the costs without that cap, and factor in cup games and then you have the costly reality we live in.
Now if you look at the average cost of an away ticket in the championship which is around the £30 mark with the cheapest away ticket being £26 by Huddersfield you can only imagine the amount of money it would take to regularly see your team play.
Football is one of the only things that help a lot of people forget about their struggles for ninety minutes. Internal struggles with issues such as the cost of living crisis and other political and social problems all go away when that whistle blows.
For some people football is everything and without it they have nowhere to go to forget about their troubles and unfortunately due to the rising costs of tickets, many of those people can no longer afford to go to the football regularly.
Furthermore, I believe that fair ticket prices are imperative if we want the next generation to grow up watching football and picking up deep rooted traditions & be a part of some of the best communities across the country rather than staying inside all day playing video games.
Lower prices would encourage families to bring their children along thus getting a whole generation into the football scene.
I think the fact that not all clubs offer student prices on tickets is crazy to me. If clubs want the next generation of fans to come to games they need to do more to make it financially possible for students to regularly attend.
From a personal point of view before starting university I used to be able to afford to see my team (Cambridge United) home and away regularly, but since then I can only really afford to watch a handful of away games a season and find clubs that offer student discounts do make a huge difference on my decision on whether or not to attend a game.
The footballing pyramid and the strength of how well supported football clubs are across the UK is one of the best attributes we have as a sporting nation, however the inflation of ticket prices is seeing a lot of these fans priced out. Do we really want to see our great sporting pyramid die?
Surely clubs & the EFL should be doing so much more to get costs down or else I feel like the majority of a generation may never follow a team home and away.
If prices continue to increase at such a high rate, all this culture, community & tradition will slowly fade its way out of the game as well. So trust me when I say £20 is more than plenty for an away fans ticket in the EFL.
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