If myself, or any football fan in England, were to give the lowdown on how we felt we are treated by our clubs in this country, there would be the resounding conclusion that we get it pretty bad here. I’ve looked through various articles coupled with facts and figures which have all shown a very strong correlation between the price of football and attendance figures. It doesn’t take an expert to figure out that the cheaper the ticket, the higher the attendance. Take the example of Germany, where they have seen record average attendances and boast the best average attendances across the five major European leagues. This is represented with 6 out of the top 10 teams with the highest average attendances residing in the Bundesliga and the number 1 spot being occupied by Borussia Dortmund (Figures from the 2011/2012 season). Germany is the prime example of showing other countries how it should be done on all fronts.
| Rank | Club | Average Attendance |
Season | Stadium and city | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Borussia Dortmund | 80,521 |
2011–12 | Westfalenstadion, Dortmund |  Germany |
| 2 | FC Barcelona | 78,340 |
2011–12 | Camp Nou, Barcelona |  Spain |
| 3 | Manchester United | 75,387 |
2011–12 | Old Trafford, Manchester |  England |
| 4 | Real Madrid | 74,836 |
2011–12 | Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, Madrid | Spain |
| 5 | Bayern Munich | 69,000 |
2011–12 | Allianz Arena, Munich | Germany |
| 6 | Schalke 04 | 61,139 |
2011–12 | Veltins-Arena, Gelsenkirchen | Germany |
| 7 | Arsenal | 60,000 |
2011–12 | Emirates Stadium, London | England |
| 8 | VfB Stuttgart | 55,089 |
2011–12 | Mercedes-Benz Arena, Stuttgart | Germany |
| 9 | Hertha Berlin | 54,259 |
2011–12 | Olympiastadion, Berlin | Germany |
| 10 | Hamburger SV | 53,635 |
2011–12 | Imtech Arena, Hamburg | Germany |
I am a Fulham fan and had the luck of being able to go to the Europa League Final in Hamburg back in 2010. I got to experience first hand how brilliantly the Germans deal with fans and help to make the experience of going to a football match as enjoyable as can be. The one thing that struck me as genius was the idea of having a free rail pass in the city for anybody with a match ticket on the day of the match. This goes a long way to help to alleviate added costs which already cripples the average football fan yearly. Whilst entering the stadium and watching the game, you find that staff at the ground are very co-operative and generally nice towards fans, which is a far cry from in England where most grounds tend to treat you as if you are a football hooligan.
In addition to this, you find the very popular idea of safe standing sections at virtually all Bundesliga grounds, which is particularly successful at the Westfalenstadion (Borussia Dortmund’s home ground), where those who wish to stand have the option to, leading to all parties being happy and creating a brilliant atmosphere. Whereas in England, those who want to stand up get constantly harassed by stewards, even when not obstructing the views of others, causing constant problems and anger amongst those people.
However, the main strategy that really is top dog is the price of tickets. If you take Borussia Dortmund as an example, who are a big team on both the Domestic and European stage, you would be surprised to find out that season ticket prices at the club start from as low as €225 which even includes 3 Champions League group games, which equates to around £180. You compare that to Arsenal, whose season tickets start from just short of £1000. Also, the average ticket price at a Bundesliga game is around €15 which is closer to the booking fee for a match than the actual price of the ticket in the Premier League. It is clear that the fan in Germany is treated as a King and it makes you wonder how differently things could be in England. When lower league teams are charging more than the top teams in the Bundesliga, it leads to suggest that we need to adopt several ideas from our good old friends the Germans.
Borussia Dortmund 2012/2013 Season Ticket Prices
| category | in EUR |
| Stammtisch | please inquire |
| category 1 | € 685,00 / 840,00* |
| category 2 | € 580,00 / 690,00* |
| category 3 | € 525,00 / 625,00* |
| category 4 | € 480,00 / 575,00* |
| category 5 | € 425,00 / 510,00* |
| category 5 (handicapped) | € 170,00 / 200,00* |
| category 6 | € 365,00 / 430,00* |
| category 15 | € 845,00 / 1020,00* |
| wheelchair | € 90,00 / 110,00* |
| standing room | € 187,00 / 225,00* |
| standing room, Youth | € 109,00 / 140,00* |
| standing room, handicapped | € 95,00 / 110,00* |
| children (up to 14, blocks 64 and 65) | € 75,00 / 90,00* |
| youth (between 15 and 16, blocks 64 and 65) | € 112,00 / 130,00* |
Taking all of this into consideration, it comes as little surprise that football fans are getting more and more frustrated by the cost of following their football team in this present day, especially when you add in the factor of the current economic situation. The problem is that football fans in this country will do their utmost to follow their team. You can include myself in that quota as I’m certain that most of my expenditure is following Fulham. With this in mind, clubs can take advantage of this and cash in big time, which is currently the case. Fans are seen as just another customer rather than a contributor to the club and this is something that needs to be addressed.
You look at clubs in the Premier League such as Wigan and QPR who struggle to sell out games on a regular basis despite having certain capacity stadiums that should be selling out games more often than not. There could be other factors that play a role in this case but it does indicate that many fans can’t afford to go to the football as frequently as they may have previously done or intend to. You would think that the amount of money that is generated in football, that clubs in England would essentially ‘give something back’ to the fans in relation to cut price tickets. Especially if you consider the idea that a lot of the money generated by clubs is a result of fans taking their wallet out and spending their hard earned cash on tickets, memberships, merchandise etc. But in this current day, clubs look at fans with dollar signs and will take any opportunity to part fans with their money. The cost is crippling the average football fan and unfortunately it doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.
Read more about the Price of Football.
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