As Liverpool FC supporters groups welcomed the news that the club would freeze ticket prices for 2025/26, we are reminded that were it not for such fan movements, these clubs would have already been lost to many fans.
The welcome price freeze came on the back of the work put in by fans and supporters’ clubs over the years in attempts to lower ticket prices and make attending matches affordable to all.
In recent months, groups of supporters across the Premier League have come together to pressure the owners of top-flight clubs to improve ticket affordability, retain concession pricing and ensure long-standing generational support is catered for.
There is a desire for many club owners to treat matchdays as single, one-off events.
Their idea is to attract attendees who are more likely to pay a higher price for a one-off game rather than encourage congregations of long-standing, generational support within a stadium.
This line of thinking can lead to clubs making fewer season tickets available, or not selling seasonal or individual match tickets at concessionary prices, and this results in games being inaccessible for many fans.
Providing the matchday experience™
One of the things modern top-level clubs use as a selling point is the matchday experience. They use it to attract TV deals, advertising, corporate sponsors and associated attendees. But a big part of the very experience they are selling comes from the fans they are beginning to price out.
If they’re not careful, they will have no matchday experience.
No advertising slogans, marketing or branding can replace what makes football so popular in the first place. The game brings with it a sense of identity and place, and Anfield is one of football’s stadiums where this is seen most starkly.
The flags, songs, and support don’t just happen, they are the result of decades of support passed down from one generation to the next.
English football grounds have supposedly become more family-friendly in recent decades, but at the same time they have become less accessible and less affordable to many families, resulting in fewer young people able to attend matches.
This can alter the dynamic of the matchday and dilute the atmosphere, which can eventually alter a club’s entire identity.
Such cold business practices that ignore fan culture and club identity are becoming commonplace in football as it has been taken over by the richest in society, whether they be capitalist states or venture capitalist groups and individuals.
This is why supporters’ groups are important. They can work towards holding these club owners to account in the same way a trade union would fight for workers’ rights and fair treatment.
We’ve seen multi-club ownership become common in football, but multi-club fan movements could play a big role in trying to save top-level football.
The ticket tout problem
Raising prices is not the only way clubs will look to exploit fans via ticketing. It’s only a matter of time before some make moves to profit from the secondary ticketing market, even though the practice is currently not allowed in English football.
There are warnings to be taken from the United States where, in Major League Soccer, tickets for games involving Lionel Messi and Inter Miami have skyrocketed in the secondary market.
It gives these league games the feel of an exhibition match rather than a genuine competitive game involving one of the greatest-ever players for regular fans to enjoy.
In what has been a form of dynamic pricing, many original Inter Miami fans have been priced out of their home stadium in Fort Lauderdale — something Premier League owners would no doubt love to emulate.
It’s no surprise that Chelsea owner Todd Boehly is one of the owner already involved in trying to control secondary ticketing sales.
One of the many companies he has connections to is the ticket reseller Vivid Seats, and the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust have raised concerns that this is bordering on illegal and at least constitutes a “breach of trust” from their owner.
“Vivid Seats currently lists hundreds of Chelsea FC General Admission tickets at significantly inflated prices,” the CST said in a statement last month.
“As these tickets are not sold by the Chelsea FC website, they are considered by the club to be ‘illegal sales’.
“Within the recent CST ticket touting survey, many CST members suggested that Mr Boehly’s connection with Vivid Seats is a ‘breach of trust’ and could be a conflict of interest.”
Dodgy dealing
These owners treat football clubs like they would their other businesses. Their blinkered capitalist mindset is a disease affecting many walks of life, but in football, where these clubs are institutions requiring custodians rather than aggressive capitalist ownership and exploitation, their manoeuvres are exposed.
At Man United, Jim Ratcliffe has been blatantly applying the anti-worker, anti-union tactics used in his other businesses, and hundreds of non-playing staff have been made redundant since his arrival.
It is almost as though he is seeing what billionaires and right-wing political figures such as Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Javier Milei are doing and applying it to football; the DOGE mindset of ripping out the pillars and foundations to save a few inconsequential pennies then blaming the workers when the whole thing collapses.
Many of these owners are so used to getting their own way in other areas of business, and being told how great they are simply because they’re rich, that they are likely shocked when they receive pushback for doing the same things in football.
But this pushback is required, and it sometimes works.
A multi-club movement led by fans
Report on the back page of today’s Morning Star as football supporters begin to unite in opposition to ticket price rises. pic.twitter.com/wNgt4rNPe7
— James Nalton (@JDNalton) September 27, 2024
We have seen other clubs, including West Ham and Brentford, freeze season ticket prices ahead of next season, as supporter movements across the league have come together to raise issues around ticket prices.
Though some of these supporters gatherings and protests have been relatively small, the message has been strong and the work done aims to benefit all supporters, even those not active in the protests.
The message has been heard by clubs, helped by amplification from some media outlets and journalists. Imagine what could happen if this grows from a handful of people at each club into a mass movement across the game.
Price freezes are only a start as ticket prices were already too high to begin with.
So, though clubs should be applauded for listening to fans and freezing prices, and reintroducing things like concessionary ticket pricing and more accessible season ticket options, there should be no let up in the pressure being applied.
