The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

FFA prices turn fans away from A-League finals

Roar Rookie
1st April, 2012
Advertisement
Roar Rookie
1st April, 2012
67
4112 Reads

Brisbane Roar’s 2-0 victory in the first leg of the major semi-final over the Central Coast Mariners was a good result for the Roar and their fans. What wasn’t such a good result was the crowd of 15,000.

It was a shadow of the 25,000 that turned up for the same event last year.

Now, Brisbane football fans are a fickle bunch, but they will show up for finals.

This was evident in the 1996/97 season of the NSL, when the Brisbane Strikers, after failing to get a decent crowd all year, sold out Lang Park with 40,000 fans suddenly turning up to watch them win the Ericsson Cup against Sydney United.

Similar scenes were repeated last year when the Roar, who had averaged around 10,000 a game over the season, suddenly hosted 25,000 in the major semi final and then drew 53,000 for the grand final.

Significant progress has been made since the days of the Strikers, and the last two years has seen a steady increase in fans at Roar matches this season.

So why did only 15,000 turn up on Saturday to the semi final between the top two sides, who have developed such a great rivalry?

I believe ticket prices had a major impact.

Advertisement

Last year in the lead-up to the finals series, I made comment on the steep increase in prices that had occurred, and how I believed this was unfair price gouging by the FFA.

The high prices created a situation where people who had supported the Roar all season were faced with what were unaffordable prices to see the finals series.

The matter was highlighted publicly by Courier Mail journalist Marco Monteverde. This issue has also been observed elsewhere, with complaints about fans being priced out of the Champions League final in Europe.

I received a range of responses to my comments – many disagreed with my view, claiming that the prices were on par with NRL or AFL finals tickets and that the finals were the FFA’s opportunity to make money out of the A-League.

When I attended the semi-final and the grand final and observed the crowd numbers, I thought maybe I had grasped the wrong end of the stick.

But after seeing the relatively low attendance at the game on Saturday, I think the issue is still there to be discussed in the current context.

I don’t believe the A-League finals series is in the same category as the finals for the NRL and AFL. The competition is much younger and the fan-base and community engagement is still growing. This needs to be recognised in pricing decisions.

Advertisement

It has always been my view that it would be far better getting 20,000 people to a game at $30 than 10,000 people at $60.

With an extra 10,000 punters in the ground you’ll have 10,000 more chances of selling drinks and food and merchandise, all of which give the club gets a percentage. It creates a far better atmosphere, and you end up with 20,000 advocates for the game. If they have a good time they are more likely to come again.

Economists have a term called ‘price elasticity’. It is a measure used to show the responsiveness of the quantity demanded of a good or service to a change in its price. If something is inelastic it takes a fair increase in price to see a significant change in demand. Petrol is a pretty good example. By contrast if demand for a product is more price sensitive, then it is elastic.

For most people, A-League finals tickets are elastic. This was clear when I sent an email round to organise the tickets for a group of blokes that have become regular attendees at Roar games this year.

We usually sit in ‘regular season’ category C seats located adjacent to the six-yard box at a cost of $25. For the finals series, these seats were repriced at $70. The response from mates was emphatic – sorry, I’m not paying $70 to go.

Two of us ended up going, but we relocated into the section behind the goals for $28 – this section, which is not the best location to view the game, was packed. There were still plenty of seats available in other areas of the ground.

People obviously made one of two decisions. They either paid the much lower price so they could attend, knowing they’d be sitting in an inferior part of the stadium to watch the game or, they simply chose not to come because they weren’t prepared to pay the additional $50+ being asked for to sit anywhere but behind the goals.

Advertisement

It appears that around 10,000 people chose the latter.

The FFA has to decide what it is trying to achieve. Should it try and make as much money as it can out of the finals series and risk alienating the very people who have supported the game all year? Or try and engage with the grassroots of the community and encourage as many people to attend what is the premier spectacle of the Australian domestic football season?

The policy makers must recognise that in the current economic climate where discretionary spending is limited, releasing tickets at a price that reflects what is reasonable for people is likely to result in a much better outcome all round.

You can’t just take people for granted, hit the autopilot button and jack the prices up all around the ground because it’s the finals series.

As we saw on Saturday, when you do this a lot of fans just won’t turn up for the flight. Surely this isn’t the outcome that FFA or the clubs are looking for.

close