Premier League season tickets assessed: Most expensive? Cheapest? Do price rises affect transfer spend?

New York Times

5 days ago

The Premier League returns next month and stadiums will be full for another season.
Attendances continue to hold up, with waiting lists for season tickets across many clubs, while broadcasting revenues remain lucrative. But for regular matchgoing fans, the cost of watching their team will be difficult to stomach.
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Prices for season tickets have increased markedly since the resumption of matches after the Covid-19 pandemic. This season, there has been a change in attitude, with seven clubs freezing prices for attending their 19 home league matches.
However, all but one club — Crystal Palace — raised prices last term. Still, attending football remains an expensive hobby, with nine clubs charging more than £1,000 for their most expensive offerings and several others coming close to that mark.
Clubs had previously expressed sympathy with fans and referenced the cost-of-living crisis while simultaneously increasing prices. This year, those reasons are less prominent, with the latest argument being that the increased cost of national insurance employer contributions has necessitated an increase in prices.
Season tickets entitle fans to attend all of their club's 19 home fixtures. They are cheaper than purchasing individual match tickets, which in many cases have again been subject to price rises.
Ten Premier League clubs have some form of minimum usage policy. Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brentford, Brighton & Hove Albion, Leeds United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Sunderland and Tottenham Hotspur require a certain number of games to either be attended, the ticket to be resold via a ticket exchange, or it be transferred. West Ham United monitor non-attendance.
Here, The Athletic looks at clubs' prices. This is based on the cost for a new buyer, or, in the case of clubs where there are no new tickets available, the final renewal phase. For consistency, we have used non-hospitality season ticket pricing that can be purchased via the clubs' ticketing portal.
The hefty outlay many fans will have to cope with continues to raise eyebrows. At Fulham, where season tickets have reached general sale and there remains availability, the most expensive season ticket will set you back £3,084 in the Riverside Stand — an increase of £84 from last year. Arsenal (£1,726), Bournemouth (£1,164), Brighton (£1,035), Chelsea (£1,095), Tottenham (£2,223), and West Ham (£1,720) all significantly breach the £1,000 mark.
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Manchester City have a premium, but not hospitality, option at £1,600 in their 93:20 area, similar to Brentford, whose Dugout seating comes in at £815, more than elsewhere in the ground but still general admission.
Chelsea's Westview prices come under their 'Club Chelsea' hospitality banner, but are similar to Fulham's Riverside in that it offers the best views and access to superior facilities. These are priced between £1,745 and £4,300 and are only available on a waiting list system.
Fulham, again in the Riverside Stand, charge £2,570 for juniors, although their lowest-priced under-18 ticket in the stadium is £154. West Ham's £1,720 junior ticket is also eye-watering, but they have a much cheaper option at £109.
There continues to be a blurring of the lines over general admission season tickets, with more premium options being offered by clubs with small added benefits as clubs seek to increase their revenue.
Burnley's prices are notable and they have been frozen. Their most expensive adult season ticket costs £525, £70 less than Ipswich Town's equivalent last season. The under-22 age band has been changed to under-21 at Turf Moor, though.
Brentford have frozen their prices and outside of their slightly more premium offering of the Dugout, which provides a padded seat and access to a bar and concourse, their highest-priced adult ticket is £605. The Dugout pricing is £815.
Newly promoted Sunderland, who have sold all of their season tickets, top out at £780 for their priciest adult ticket, although they have increased prices for renewals by 9.5 per cent.
For the cheapest adult tickets, West Ham charge £345, slightly below Burnley (£352), Newcastle United (£362) and Bournemouth (£423).
Brentford offer the lowest-priced junior ticket at just £80, Newcastle provide £81 tickets for juniors, and Bournemouth's cheapest comes in at £86. Some clubs have restrictions on where juniors can sit and use a ratio of adults to juniors in their family stands.
Last season, Palace were the only club to freeze their prices, but for the new campaign, seven clubs — Brentford, Burnley, Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham, West Ham and Wolverhampton Wanderers — have done so.
At Everton, supporters have seen prices increase by up to 21 per cent, the highest increase, but with the club moving out of Goodison Park and into the Hill Dickinson Stadium, a rise in costs for supporters was to be expected.
Palace's most expensive adult ticket has risen by 9.5 per cent. Chelsea's rises are between 6.9 per cent and 15 per cent, while Brighton have raised prices by between 2.5 and 7.3 per cent for adults. For 82.5 per cent of season ticket holders at Bournemouth, there will be a 6.5 per cent increase. Nottingham Forest's are up by seven per cent. Newcastle, Manchester United and Villa have risen by five per cent. Leeds have increased theirs by four per cent, but their cheapest adult ticket has risen by 14 per cent.
Aston Villa, Manchester United, Newcastle and Forest froze junior concessions in all or part of the stadium. Brentford, Burnley, Liverpool, Manchester City, West Ham and Wolves froze prices across all categories.
That depends, but outside of the top Premier League clubs, the total income from gate receipts is relatively small when compared with overall turnover.
Excluding the promoted clubs, Arsenal's takings from ticketing account for the highest proportion of income at 21.4 per cent. Manchester United are second with 20.7 per cent, Tottenham's is 20.4 per cent, and Chelsea's is 17.1 per cent.
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Unsurprisingly, clubs with smaller stadiums have a lower proportion of their overall income made up by ticket sales. Bournemouth's is just four per cent, Brentford 6.8 per cent, Palace 7.2 per cent, Forest 7.6 per cent, while Wolves (9.1 per cent) are the final non-newly promoted club whose matchday income accounts for less than 10 per cent of their overall turnover.
'Matchday income is still a core revenue function,' Dr Dan Plumley, senior lecturer in sport finance at Sheffield Hallam University, told The Athletic last year.
'If you drop down a little bit into the lower tier of the Premier League, you'll find that broadcasting money makes up probably 60 to 70 per cent of some clubs' income.
'If you're looking at how you can generate a little bit more revenue, then moving the age brackets around, offering fewer concessions and making more people fall into what we might term a 'general bracket' — which is normally the highest priced tickets, depending on where you sit in the stadium — is one way of doing that.'
Increasingly, clubs are implementing minimum usage policies for season tickets. This is done by mandating that supporters attend a certain number of games, or if they cannot attend, then sell on a ticket exchange platform.
It is a policy first introduced in the Premier League by Brentford for the 2023-24 season and has now been further adopted. The rules and ramifications vary between clubs, with Manchester City's being the strictest. They require season ticket holders to personally attend at least 10 Premier League matches — something their supporters are challenging under the Equality Act.
Bournemouth, Burnley, Chelsea, Palace, Everton, Fulham, Forest and Wolves have no such monitoring in place this season.
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At Leeds, existing season-ticket holders were only able to renew online if they met the 80 per cent attendance threshold — 18 or more home league games in the 2024-25 season, having played in the Championship, in which you play 23 home games in a season.
Spurs have reduced the senior discount by 5 per cent and the qualifying age was raised to 66, which meant a 10 per cent rise for those affected.
Arsenal have introduced a 19-game Premier League season ticket to sit alongside their 23-game option, which automatically includes their four guaranteed home European matches in the Champions League, marking a change from previous years where it was opt-out only.
Season-ticket holders at the Emirates who post their tickets on the ticket exchange on the day of the match will only receive their credit if the ticket is sold, but if they do so before the day of the game, they will receive their credit regardless of whether it sells.
West Ham, who last year removed concession tickets from bands one to four — those seats closest to the pitch — have now reinstated those options after facing significant fan discontent.
Every club is required to offer fans the chance to spread the cost of their ticket over a period of time. Half of the 20 Premier League clubs still partner with external firm V12 Retail Finance, whereas the other 10 have taken this process in-house. Generally, those using this option will end up paying more for their ticket, either by being excluded from early renewal phases or by paying interest on what is effectively a loan.
Arsenal, who use V12, offer four or 10 payments with an interest rate of 4.65 per cent and 6.31 per cent; Chelsea's eight-month plan with the same company is at 6.64 per cent; Everton's in-house option for 10 or 12 months has a £55 'facility fee'; Fulham have plans between four and 10 months with an interest rate of between 4.46 per cent and 7.32 per cent.
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Leeds' offering for six or 10 payments with V12 is charged at 5.36 per cent and 7.32 per cent. Liverpool's 10-month plan has a 7.32 per cent interest rate, while Manchester United's is 6.31 per cent — both via V12. Forest's four and 10-month plans with V12 have a 9.80 per cent rate. At West Ham, the same options have a fee of 4.46 per cent and 7.32 per cent.
Palace offer a 10 equal payment plan with no administration fees or interest. However, those supporters are only eligible to renew from phase two, where prices are approximately 7.5 per cent higher. But this is not a price hike for those who buy for the first time, as they are only eligible after renewals close.
All other Premier League clubs do not charge a fee for their payment plan options.
Most clubs have moved to a digital-first or digital-only approach. This is the direction of travel, initiated by the Premier League, which stipulated that it will be mandatory — 70 per cent of all tickets must be delivered digitally — by the start of the 2026-27 season. Newly promoted clubs will have two years to implement its use.
Clubs must provide reasonable adjustments for fans who, through disability, are unable to use digital ticketing, meaning a small subset of supporters will still use physical or e-tickets, but many face the hurdle of an application process.
Environmental concerns are occasionally cited, but more prominently, the Premier League and its clubs argue the shift to digital ticketing is to better determine who is in the ground and reduce touting. When approached by The Athletic, the Premier League offered no hard evidence that touting has been reduced by digital ticketing.
However, it says it is reviewing support for clubs' anti-touting operations. It says physical tickets are easy to sell on, while print-at-home tickets with barcodes can be printed multiple times and sold to people who then can't access a stadium.
The Premier League points out rotating or hidden barcodes mean digital tickets can't be screenshotted and sold multiple times, as they must be refreshed before going into the stadium.
The direction of travel with season tickets is clear. Clubs continue to find ways to maximise revenue at the cost of matchgoing supporters.
Changes to pricing structures this year have been minimal and far less controversial, but more clubs have introduced minimum attendance rules and sought to make their offerings more attractive without pricing supporters out completely. For a small but important section of season ticket holders, digital ticketing is a major concern.
Supporters will question whether there is a genuine need to increase prices, but clubs seem destined to keep finding ways to raise more income from match-going supporters.