The BBC published some research today showing that prices in the Premier League have been rising faster than the cost of living.
I’ve been looking at these price surveys over the last couple of years and find them quite misleading. The problem is that football clubs charge lots of different prices, and over time have been increasing the number of different prices they charge. Hence focusing on a particular price – e.g. the lowest ticket price – tells us very little unless we also know how many seats are offered at that price. A price of £1 for a seat, for example, would be impressive if offered to 20% of the fans, but less impressive if offered as special discount to ten fans.
An alternative way to think about prices is to look at matchday income per fan – this gives an impression of what fans are being charged on average. These figures are supplied by Deloitte in their annual survey and the data goes back to 1997, although the most recent data only covers the 2012/13 season. However, the chart below illustrates a striking fact- matchday income per fan (adjusted for inflation) and attendance tend to move together.
But this should not be so surprising- when demand is increasing then so will ticket prices too. Most clubs are constrained by capacity and many games are sold out, so extra demand is choked off by raising prices. Indeed, if this were not the case then tickets would be underpriced and a black market would emerge- as seems to be the case in Germany where ticket prices are kept very low.
In 2013/14 attendance reached 13.9 million, the highest level since 1973 (when there were two more teams in the league and hence more games played), so it is not surprising to see prices rising again. In fact prices have fallen since 2007 in real terms because of the effects of the recession, but as demand is picking up clubs are starting to push through real price increases for the first time in several years.
Several critics have been trundled out to bemoan the price increases (which is fair enough), but also to issue dire warnings that the clubs are destroying their customer base. But this is silly. Clubs are raising prices because demand is currently so great. It would n’t surprise me, given the success of the World Cup in showcasing the world’s talent, a significant fraction of which plays in the Premier League, if we didn’t see a further jump in prices in the current year.
Is there a reason that the press in England are so negative about football, particularly in a country where it obviously thrives? I suppose you’d say supply and demand regarding this too in fairness.
The press do seem, based on my own observations, fixated on some fairly peculiar aspects of the game, and focus on problems or failures, which are almost totally baseless, such as the performance of the England team or the business side of the game. You seem to enjoy exposing this, and my only criticism is that you don’t go far enough.
Two of your last three blog posts have been based on the fact the press narrative either interprets something in a needlessly negative way (ticket prices), or upholds a negative view based on very little evidence at all (financial stability of the Premier League). Do you have any thoughts as to why the press are so inclined to do so, other than selling papers?
I’m waffling now, but I think that the broadsheet AND tabloid newspapers do not have the circulation to claim that they are just providing what people want to read, because it seems a lot of people disagree with their football writing, and they do not sell a lot of papers any way. I think the whole media apparatus around the sport is short-termist, cliched, over-saturated and with entirely the wrong priorities. Managers being almost at the centre of the sport in journalistic terms is an example of how wide of the mark they can go.
I think you raise a good question. There is a strain of pessimism in British thinking generally – it’s the flipside of “Keep Calm and Carry On”. Also there is genuine anger among some people that the game has been taken over by capitalists who have turned a social activity into a business – you can see that I don’t really agree with this, but it is one interpretation of history which is often embraced on both left and right (the loss of authenticity). It’s probably also the case that many people who write about the game are not truly representative of those who watch it. I think most fans are just interested in their club- but these people do not write polemics in the media.