I took part in arguably the world’s politest protest this weekend. In the 18th minute of Fulham’s match against Manchester United, Fulham fans flashed yellow laminated cards which read: “Please don’t price us out”. The 18th minute was because Fulham’s season ticket prices have gone up on average by 18 per cent over last season. The “please” was very Fulham, but there was a serious point: ordinary fans simply cannot afford ticket prices any longer and we are all fed up with price-gouging.
It was way back in 2000 when Roy Keane coined his immortal criticism of fans in luxury boxes and who enjoy corporate hospitality who, he argued, were ruining Manchester United home games: “they have a few drinks and probably the prawn sandwiches, and they don’t realise what’s going on out on the pitch”. The “prawn-sandwich brigade” came to epitomise football in the Sky Sports-led Premier League era, during which fans who actually attend games gradually became less significant than armchair fans watching Sky, TNT, ITV, BBC, Amazon and the rest.
A one-off match ticket for our game ranged from £67 to an eye-watering league record of £160 in our spanking new Riverside Stand – still incomplete after half a decade. The most expensive tickets there are now up for grabs at an astonishing £3,000 a pop – the costliest season tickets in the country. This is for Fulham, a small family club by the River Thames, once famous for its local working-class fanbase. We barely survived in the lower divisions until Mohamed Al-Fayed rescued us. Today, Fulham is owned by billionaire Shahid Khan, whose family also owns All Elite Wrestling and the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars.
In the US, price-gouging is even starker. Last month, I was lucky enough attend a Boston Celtics vs New York Knicks basketball game in Boston. Seat tickets were more than $200 (£162) each, a Samuel Adams beer in the arena was an astonishing $16.95 (£13.70), which made the £6 Camden Ale at Fulham’s Craven Cottage seem a bargain.
The cheapest green Celtics replica vest was a mind-boggling $110 (£89). Throw in parking and hot dogs and, as my frustrated Boston cousin, said: “For a family of four, it’s now a $1,000 night. What the f**k?”
Despite these prices, seats for the four main Boston sports teams – the New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins and the Celtics – are among the toughest in the US to obtain. Who is going to matches this expensive? Certainly not the working-class supporters that built these fanbases, when teams like the Patriots were losing.
Fan protests can work. The £30 away ticket price cap on Premier League games was introduced in 2016 after campaigns to ensure away fans, and the atmosphere they bring, could be sustained.
Premier League attendances topped 15 million in 2022, the Championship 11 million. But, if you went to many stadiums today, the atmosphere is just not what it was two decades ago. “Football in a library” is a derisory chant that has become reality. If price inflation persists, then football will kill its own golden goose.