A little lunchtime rant here.

We all know football is too expensive. We all know Arsenal is up their amongst the most expensive. Our Category A most expensive ticket is ludicrous and prices out many fans, and season tickets starting at £1014 hits the pocket hard.

Every year the BBC do their Price of Football. I actually think it is brilliant to see exactly what all clubs are charging, from match tickets to a cup of tea. But then I get annoyed. Annoyed at the misreporting of the Arsenal season ticket.

It should be common knowledge by now that Arsenal fans get 26 games for their season ticket. 19 home games, 7 cup games. So for our £1014, we get 26 games.

To put this in comparison, Arsenal pay an average of £39 per game. Chelsea’s cheapest season ticket is £750. This works out to £39.47 per game. Only pennies in it, but Arsenal’s is cheaper.

What this leads to is misinformed tables like this on the BBC:

So even though the BBC know that Arsenal fans get 26 games (it is in the small print at the end of the article) they still create a data table without taking this into account. This then leads to others using the data

So What has happened here is they have taken Arsenal’s season ticket cost – £1014 – and dividend it by how many Premier League home games there are – 19. This completely ignores the fact that Arsenal get an additional 7 home games.

Once you add on the goals scored in the first 4 Champions League fixtures (7) and first 3 FA Cup home games (6) you end up with Arsenal fans paying £23.04 per goal. Still expensive, but now only 3^rd most expensive.

And when did pounds per goal become a thing? It seems to me to be a statistic for statistics case. For all intents and purposes, you can win the league scoring 26 goals; 26 1-0 wins & 12 0-0 draws. At that point the goals per game would be nearly £30. But you end up with the league title. It really is a pointless table.

One last thought, maybe Arsenal should become better at manipulating the statistics like Manchester United and Manchester City.

Manchester City always have one of the lowest ‘cheapest’ season ticket prices – currently £299. But what they do not declare is how many of these are available (very few) and that this price does not guarantee you the same seat every game. So they have around 100 tickets available each year for low prices where one day you cloud be down by the North-East corner flag, the next game up in the Gods completely opposite.

Unlike Arsenal, Manchester United do not get cup games included in the cost of their season ticket price. Instead, they have to set up a direct debit with the club which automatically takes money out for any home FA Cup or Champions League tie. If for whatever reason, the club are unable to take the direct debit (such as lack of funds) the club are entitled to suspend the home season ticket holder for one league home game. So Man U season ticket holders could be forced to buy an extra 10 tickets (if they made the FA Cup QF & Champions League SF). An additional cost of £280.

I do not mind people bashing Arsenal for ticket prices. It is right and fair. But the way the media continually make it appear that Arsenal are the Bad Guys of Football Tickets with misleading information and articles with more pictures of Arsenal fans then any other – a recent article I read on ticket prices had 4 pictures, all of Arsenal fans – is lazy journalism and frankly wrong.

Let’s start reporting the facts properly.

Keenos
Follow @KeenosAFC