Is Football Too Expensive For The Fans?

It now costs anywhere between £25 and £70 to watch a 90-minute game of football in the Premiership, depending on whether you are a Wigan supporter or a Chelsea supporter! Even at £25, many fans feel this is a lot of money to pay for the short amount of entertainment you get, and this is probably correct.

When you compare football to other forms of entertainment like the cinema, it is ridiculously expensive. To go and watch a two hour film, it costs between £5 and £10, depending on where you are in the country; which means you could watch about 12 hours worth of films for the same price as a 90-minute game of football. However, it can't be compared to this because a film is shown worldwide many times a day for up to a month, so they can afford to charge less; if it was a one-off showing, I’m sure they would charge far more.

Comparing football to another sport, then, like boxing, you can go and watch a big fighter like Ricky Hatton or Joe Calzaghe for around £40, which includes about four under-card fights and the whole event ends up lasting about four hours which is better value also, but the actual main event only lasts a maximum of about 35-40 minutes. Again it is difficult to compare because of this.

Football fans show a huge amount of loyalty to their clubs, only to be ripped off by them; they keep the club going. If nobody went to a match, they would be out of business within a few weeks; so, it is in the club's interest to keep the fans happy. To be fair to most of the Premiership clubs, they have actually introduced a lot of offers to reduce ticket prices but, once again, it’s only the ‘big four’ which continue to put up their ticket prices. Man United’s owners made it compulsory for fans to buy tickets for cup matches if they wanted to keep their season tickets for the season after. This is glory supporter syndrome; they know that even if a few thousand don’t renew their tickets because of this, there will be another ten thousand waiting to get tickets.

Football has grown so much worldwide over the last decade, and prices have sky-rocketed everywhere; this can’t possibly continue and means that eventually they will HAVE to start reducing them, especially with the current economic situation. When it comes to feeding your family or going to a football match, I’d like to think most people would choose the first option.

The increase in football being shown on TV has already started to affect crowds, especially at cup games. Many people can’t go out on a Monday night to watch football because of family commitments and they may have paid for a season ticket. Numerous teams play only maybe 3 or 4 games a season at 3 pm on a Saturday which, again, is bad for fans. Eventually, things will come crashing down and all the clubs' owners will again realise how valuable the fans are! Get a custom usb stick with your favourite footie team's logo on it!