Tag Archives: Premier League

Arsenal could charge as little as £21.25 to ALL fans

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In a follow up to the last couple of articles about ticket prices, I got to thinking (I know, it’s dangerous).

One of the interesting parts of my article yesterday was that if Arsenal offered all fans – both home and away- tickets for £20, they would have a deficit of arround £60,000,000 in gate receipts over the season. A big number. A number enough for the club to be greedy and boycott the Newcastle offer. What got me thinking though was ‘what would Arsenal have to charge to break even in terms of turnover, taking into account the new TV deal hitting the clubs this year.’

The magic number we are looking for is £100m, which was approximately Arsenal’s most recent published match day income. To try and achieve this, we need to break down (using approximations from when the stadium was 1st built as the club does not release full breakdown’s) the stadium, to ensure we do not include those club level/box seats.

Club Level generates around £18.5m per season
Box Seats generates £13.8m per season
Diamond Level generates £1m

So ‘non ordinary’ seats generates £33.3m a season (I am going to round it down to £33m). That leaves £67,000,000 in revenue to find from both the new TV deal, and the 53,000 ‘ordinary’ seats.

This year the Premier League Champions will likely get £40,000,000 more in TV money then Manchester United got last year. The increased difference between 1st and 20th is around £1.5m per place. Therefore, if Arsenal finish 4th, they will receive around £35.5m more then they did last season. Remember, we are attempting to find £67m. We have already found £35.5m in increased gate receipts. That leaves us with just £31.5m for Arsenal to match their most recent turnover with the TV deal taken into account.

So using similar maths that I used yesterday, that Arsenal will play 28 home games, how much would a ticket cost for Arsenal to match the previous turnover? Well the equation is simple.

£31,500,00 is what we are trying to find. Divide this by the total seats available – 53,000 – we get £595. Based on the 28 expected home games, Arsenal would need to charge every man, woman and child £21.25 per game to match the total turnover. Nearly Twenty’s Plenty hey!

To ensure I have got it right, lets work backwards. £21.25 times the 28 games is £595. Over the 53,000 ordinary seats we get £31.5m (and change).

Ordinary gate receipts + increase in TV money + executive seats = ?
£31.5m + £35.5m + £33.5m = £100.5m

In summary, the new TV deal should be making things cheaper for football fans. With all things taken into account, Arsenal could reduce match day tickets to a standard £21.25 per game throughout the ordinary seats, and still turnover the same amount as they did in 2012.  Sadly, when the new cash from the TV comes in, the leaches will come out and the money will go into the pockets of players, agents, and hangers on.

Writing this has made me feel a little sick. Tickets could be nearly halved and revenue remain the same. But greed will take over. My only hope is my maths is wrong, but I feel it is not. If it is wrong, I will apologise.

The Twenty’s Plenty is something I back. Not just for away fans, but for all fans. And my basic workings out shows that Arsenal’s revenue would remain the same, even with a reduction to £21.25. I imagine across the Premier League, all clubs could charge a similar amount, and revenues remain high.

Greed is killing our game. More fans get priced out every year. We can all dream. My dream is that next summer, with the money from the new TV deal coming in, Arsenal will announce season ticket prices of £550 and single match day tickets across the board of £21.25. A man has to have a dream.

Keenos

Why did more clubs not take up Newcastle’s ‘Twenty’s Plenty’ offer?

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On Tuesday, we began discussion on the pricing scandal at Manchester City. One of the aspects of the article was the Twenty’s Plenty campaign spearheaded by The Football Supporters Federation. On the back of this, Newcastle United offered all clubs in the Premier League a reciprocal pricing agreement where they would charge away fans £20 if their opponents reciprocated the offer.

Of all the other 19 Premier League clubs, only Swansea City and West Bromwich Albion took them up on the offer. A couple of other clubs have done some side agreements, such as Crystal Palace offering to knock £5 off of the Newcastle travelling fans ticket if this was reciprocated, but by and large, the offer by Newcastle was ignored. The question going through my head when reading this was a simple one.

Why?

Everyone says that the reason why a single club is unable to lower ticket prices as they then generate less revenue, and as a consequence, put themselves at a disadvantage to other Premier League clubs. If that rationale is true, why then, would barely any club take up an offer which, if every club took it up, would create a disadvantage not to themselves, but to an opponent. In this case Newcastle United.

Had every club have taken up Newcastle United’s offer, they would all be down a similar amount in revenue, that being the difference between the usual ticket price and the £20. Meanwhile Newcastle would be down 19 times that. So if clubs are refusing to budge on ticket prices due to putting themselves at a disadvantage, why would they not take up this offer? Greed.

Greed can be the only answer. Whilst clubs all pay lip services to giving fans a better service and more competitive prices (‘we would if we could’ is the often justification), when it comes down to it, they refuse to budge.

£20 for an away ticket to go to Newcastle would have been more than reasonable. In fact, I would say it is cheap. With an £80 train to Newcastle still required you are still looking at an Arsenal away fan spending £100 to get from London Kings Cross to Newcastle. Incidental, despite Manchester City charging us £58, my cheap rail (£31) means that the Manchester City trip is actually cheaper. Anyway, I digress. £20 would have been a good deal for fans. But then the brain cogs start turning.

Why can Arsenal, for example, reciprocate the Twenty’s Plenty agreement with Newcastle, but then not offer the same to Sunderland, Southampton or Swansea. Why can they not get an agreement that Twenty’s Plenty with Cardiff and Crystal Palace? The fact is, they would have no justification to not come up with similar agreements throughout the Premier League.

One reciprocal agreement would have raised the questions of more. More would have created more. And before you know it, all Premier League clubs have decided that Twenty’s Plenty for all away fans. One deal would have unravelled the cartel, the price fixing, amongst Premier League sides.

You see, they all agree to keep prices high, everyone has to pay that high price. One club makes the Twenty’s Plenty offer, the cartel then has a decision. Either all adopt it, or all boycott it. They decided the latter. Premier League clubs act as a cartel. All agreeing to keep prices high to ensure profits are maximised.  They are no different to energy companies or supermarkets. All of whom fix prices to ensure it is the customer that loses out. They do it for greed.

Greed is the only justifiable reasoning for all clubs not jumping all over Newcastle’s Twenty’s Plenty offer. The joke is, how little the greed actually makes Premier League sides.

Arsenal has the second largest away capacity in the Premier League, after Manchester United. The maximum amount of tickets an away side can claim in the Premier League is 3,000 (although the area can be expanded to 4,500 behind the goal for cup games). Now Arsenal announced earlier this season that:

“There will be five ‘A’ Category, eight ‘B’ Category and six ‘C’ category matches in the Premier League across the season.”

Now a little bit of mathematics shows that the 5 Cat A games will generate £310 per seat. the Cat B ones £284 per seat, and the Cat C games £153. A total of £747 for all 19 Premier League games. Now divide this by the 19 games gives you an average of £39 per seat.

Now if you are still with me (and not bored or in the process of taking off your socks to check my maths), the difference between £39 and £20 is £19 (I did that one without my calculator), that works out as £361 per seat over the 19 league games. Now for the magic.

£361 multiplied by the 3,000 seats is £1,083,000. That is how much Arsenal would lose if they offered every Premier League side an away ticket for £20.

£1,083,000

That is the cost of a Premier Leagues greed. Taking into account that, as we mentioned, Arsenal have the 2nd largest ground, and amongst the highest ticket prices, it is unlikely that anyone will have a bigger loss then Arsenal. £1,083,000 is the price of a football clubs greed.

Now it might seem a large number to some of you. However, when you take into account that in 2013, the turnover of Arsenal Football Club was £242,800,000, a little over £1m is no longer that big a number. It would be 0.4% of our turnover. The greed of Arsenal, and other clubs, is so minuscule it is unexplainable. £1,083,000 for a football club is nothing, especially when the new TV deal, in this season, will see the BOTTOM clubs income rise by around £22 million. The greed is unexplainable. But then again, the greedy always want more.

What the clubs are clearly worried about is the Pandora’s Box that Twenty’s Plenty could open. If they can offer away fans tickets for £20, why can they not offer home fans? And they the ball of string will begin to unravel. By boycotting Newcastle’s offer, they ensure that away fans do not get a better deal, and as a consequence, ensure that home fans continue to pay a premium.

If that box were to open, how much would it cost Arsenal? Well their match day revenue is around £100m (give or take), were they to offer tickets for £20 to all 60,000 supporters over a 28 game seasons (taking into account average amount of cup games) Arsenal would see a revenue drop from £100m to £33.6m. Around a £60,000,000 drop (although this does not factor in the coporate seats). Now that is the greed!

All I know is that Arsenal Football Club would not miss £1,083,000 if they agreed with every club in the Premier League tickets for £20, however, as a regular away fan an extra £361 (approximately) in my pocket over a season would make a BIG difference.

Keenos

The Arsenal and Me – Tushar’s Story

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I was a 13yr old with no interest whatsoever in football. I was a cricket fan. By a lucky chance I happened to purchase the FIFA 2002 game. But I just could not win any match. Then I once played with the first team in the Premier League list (The Arsenal of course)…that was my first win which included I still remember a spectacular bicycle kick from a certain chap called Henry (who I had never heard of before). That of course does not make you a Gooner.

Then one day while surfing on tv I found this football game being telecast on the most ridiculously perfect football pitch (I didn’t know the name of course) & Lo and Behold! it was an Arsenal match. That was the 1st time I saw Thierry Henry & Dennis Bergkamp! Those were the only two guys whose names I knew (hardly surprising seeing that they scored the bulk of my goals in FIFA).

One thing led to another & gradually my interest in football & Arsenal began to grow. One of the main reasons was Arsenal’s fantastic footballing style(which I often tried to copy on FIFA) & secondly Highbury! What a magnificent stadium! What perfectly manicured pitch! Even my family who had nothing to do with football agreed that it was a Brilliant sight to see a sun-soaked Highbury!

By then I was hooked on to Arsenal & wasted no time finding out about the Club, about Arsene Wenger. The other players particularly
Robert Pires and Freddie Ljüngberg were my special favourites. In my school ManUtd was pretty much the only supported side but I always stood up for my team. Those banters served to increase my passion for the Club. From a boy who never watched football I changed to one who would obsessively mark the dates of Arsenal games & watch all of them…including the Champions League nights. Those UCL games are after midnight in my country but I can proudly say that pretty much watched all of them & still do.

That was in 2002-03. My greatest memory was the Invincible season….my lowest the UCL final 2006. My greatest regret…not finding out Arsenal before & so I missed out on watching MrArsenal himself.

Coming back to now…Its safe to say that my life revolves around Arsenal FC. I am a Doctor now & still strive to watch all Arsenal games including UCL ones in fact on many occasions I have skipped cricket matches when they have clashed with Arsenal games. Like all Arsenal fans who haven’t it is my dream to watch Arsenal Live in London.…that for me will be a pilgrimage.

UP THE ARSENAL!!!!
COME ON YOU GUNNERS!!!!
ARSENAL TILL I DIE!!!!

Tushar

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