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Even after Jurgen Klopp turned his nose up at Shakhtar Donetsk’s rumoured £53 million asking price for Alex Teixeira, the most striking figure on deadline day for Liverpool fans was £70.
There were murmurs on Twitter that the club was set to increase some ticket prices to as much as £70 ($142) for Category A fixtures – in the case of this season, those against Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham.
The rumours proved to be false. Liverpool announced overnight that the most expensive ticket for next season will be £7 ($14) more than expected, at £77.
Given the new Main Stand at Anfield – which will increase the stadium’s capacity to 54,000 – will be in use for 2016-17, a change in the ticketing structure was anticipated, but that doesn’t make the price hikes at all acceptable from a fans’ view.
There are some positive changes – local fans will be given priority access to at least 20,000 tickets across the season, there will be over 1000 free tickets for local kids, the price of 64 per cent of season tickets will either freeze or decrease, and 45 per cent of match-day tickets will decrease in price.
But for many fans, it’s merely a smokescreen. As pointed out by the Liverpool Supporters Committee – who was involved in 13 months of consultations with the club over ticketing – this was “a missed opportunity for LFC to lead in a fairer approach to ticket prices”.
Most seats in the Kop have been made cheaper, but it’s at the expense of the majority of the stadium. Considering Liverpool is believed to be expecting an additional £40 million worth of revenue courtesy of the new Premier League TV deal, and raked in €391.8 ($606 million) total revenue in 2014-15 according to the Deloitte Football Money League, the rises are completely unnecessary.
Premier League clubs know football fans have an insatiable appetite for their product and continue to take advantage of that. Category A matches are almost guaranteed sell outs and there are fans both willing and able to pay £77 for a ticket, but this argument isn’t about them. It’s about the fans for whom even £50 is a significant chunk of their weekly wage.
And this isn’t a Liverpool problem, it’s a football problem.
Earlier in the season, we saw the ability of clueless corporate governance to unite fans. The ‘Supporters Not Customers’ fight gathered a new wave of momentum, while the ‘Twenty’s Plenty’ campaign protested, ultimately in vain, for a cap on away ticket prices.
Bayern Munich used a banner reading ‘without fans, football is not worth a penny’ to argue that £64 ($128) to watch their team at Arsenal in the Champions League was excessive – a reasonable grievance, and one undoubtedly shared by Gunners fans who are charged the most in the Premier League every week.
For the return leg in Munich, Arsenal fans paid at the most £20 less than the German travellers did in London, as Germany proved once more that they’re at the forefront of fan culture.
Bayern fans could have watched every home match of their team’s title win last season for the price some fans of England’s top clubs paid for two matches.
Both Arsenal and Manchester United have frozen their season ticket prices for next season but there is still plenty of work to be done for fans to be given a fair go.
Ticket prices aren’t as much of an issue in Australia, likely because clubs are aware they won’t attract fans with incredulous costs. In the Premier League, the most marketable league in the world, there is no such fear and exploitation of that is now common place.
The Premier League’s bumper TV rights deal is a sign of the global demand for the competition, but the big wigs will do well to remember that it’s only been made possible by the fans they are taking advantage of.
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