The cost of being an Argyle fan

Argo's cheapest season ticket the same as Man Citeh's !! FFS.

Some interesting and also some fookin ridiculous amounts of money mentioned in the article.

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Never mind the pennies what about the 40+ years of dashed hopes? What price that cost?

The cost of watching The Arsenal is obscene

The board at Argyle have no idea about the finances of their customers as this proves.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Never mind the pennies what about the 40+ years of dashed hopes? What price that cost?

For everything else, there's..........................................

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What this report demonstrates is the economies of scale. Tens of thousands more fans coming through the turnstiles can result in lower prices, with the clubs still earning more money. It doesn't take into account the massive amounts of money flowing into the big clubs from television which also allows them to reduce prices at the turnstiles.

As an example 5000 people paying £20 equals £100,000 coming into the club. Reduce the prices to £18 and the income to the club goes down to £90,000, meaning 5555 people need to come through the turnstiles for the club to stand still.

Reduce the prices to £15,000 and the income goes down to £75,000 meaning 6666 people need to come through the gates for the club to break even.

I don't believe for one second that reducing the prices by either of those examples would result in the necessary increase in attendances for the club to earn the same amount of money. A sudden improvement in the teams performances with more goals scored and wins at the same time as a reduction in prices might result in the necessary increase in attendances but that would be a mere coincidence.

By far the biggest cost to the club is players wages. To be able to compete with other clubs, Argyle needs to be able to pay the going rate for those players. PAFC might have to factor in a premium to attract players to the South West. To attract better players to the club, PAFC need bigger attendances than other clubs and / or other means of income. Without going into the outstanding debt situation etc., it is a fallacy to think that reducing prices without a guaranteed increase in attendances will do anything but hurt the club.

In fact there could be an argument that increasing prices and gambling that the solid core support won't walk away in great numbers could be beneficial. It's all the balancing act.

Come on Brent, hike the price of a cup of tea, go for £2.51 and we can be top of the League....

The cost of food and drink is disgusting at Home Park and always has been. Also, for the money your paying the quality of the food should be alot better too. OH and also x2 check and see what sells in terms of food and drink and make sure there is enough to meet demand ie you dont sell out of steak n kidney pies before halftime.

Put the pies up too!

For me this is indicative of how badly "football" is run in this country.

And it isn't a money problem at all. There's loads of it sloshing around. There's never been more. The problem is how it is distributed. Essentially it proves incontrovertibly exactly how fallacious the idea of "trickledown economics" as a benefit to anybody outside the top echelon (you never hear of a "bottom echelon" do you?) is.

Essentially the income (mostly TV money) is overwhelmingly concentrated at the top of the pyramid (i.e. the Premier League) and even within that definition of "top" it is concentrated in increasingly fewer places. In turn this gives the teams at the very top more or less a guarantee that they will stay there unless somebody comes along with a billion quid or so to spend like Man City did. Which is considered to be entirely unfair by many but disregards how those previously at the top got there in the first place...

The teams at the very top (I ought to be using "top top" in a football context, really - shouldn't I!) then recruit the best players they can from wherever they need to creating a huge pressure on the teams below them. Those slightly behind can't increase revenue from TV because they are featured for televisation less often and so to improve their financial position they have to increase revenue from their fans and so charge more. Fans then become accustomed to paying through the nose and when their day in the sun comes along continue to fork out like they always have and so the increase in pricing is never reversed.

In turn this creates a succeed at all costs mentality because the price of failure, relegation, is vast. The complete collapse of income is ameliorated a little by parachute payments. This in turn gives a relegated PL club a huge advantage over the CCC clubs who then have to exploit their fanbase as effectively as possible (i.e. charge them more) to get close to being able to compete.

And so it goes on all the way down the pyramid in one huge, crazy inflationary spiral.

The vast rewards on offer make sound business planning a less important proposition than it is in other businesses and so some, indeed many, fail (I think the number of football club administrations has now risen to over 100 - i.e. more than the number of clubs in the entire 4 professional divisions) but all of them face having to compete in a relatively limited market for the resources (i.e.players) that they need. It's a gamble most clubs seem prepared both to accept and to embark upon.

It is complete madness that serves nobody very well except a handful of clubs at the very top.

Of course the PL will say that nearly all of their games are nearly all sold out. Supply and demand suggests that they might actually be selling themselves short! Which neatly ignores the fact that those attending now are nearly always going to be relatively well-heeled, middle-aged, middle-class people with enough disposable income to be able to afford the ticket price (likely to be c. £1000 for a season ticket). Which is great even if it ignores the absence of younger fans at games now who will be the next ones through the pipeline in a generation or two.

The simple truth here is that the rewards for being successful are far too great and the penalties for failure (often it's administration) both far too harsh and not harsh enough because no matter how bad administration is it is better than liquidation. No matter how bad things get it is very rare for a football club to disappear altogether.

The answer is for a more even distribution of income within the game, which will never happen because the PL was set up with the express purpose of preventing this from happening, and real penalties (i.e. expulsion from the FL with those people responsible facing the full fury of the law) that really hurt for teams that mismanage themselves so badly that they end up in administration (which won't ever happen either).

It's full-steam-ahead-and-aim-at-that-iceberg for football as an industry just because it can and does get away with it. And it'll stay that way until attendances start to drop and all those PL games are played out before banks of empty seats in eerie near-silence at which point the TV companies will need to do something about it. Or the government, prompted by an Inland revenue department that is being robbed blind, steps in and regulates.

Until then they'll keep on robbing us.

In fact if you subscribe to Sky or BT or whatever then you are effectively robbing yourself.

It's almost like they are following the government on how to create massive divides between the owners and the customers.
I agree a lot with what Richard Blight has written except that the £20 note barrier is massive, I know plenty of people that stopped going, or going half as much once we went over twenty quid. For someone on the minimum wage they have to work over three hours to earn their ticket.

Can't argue with any of that!

The only comment to add to it, is it's the players wages and transfer fees that are governing the ever growing madness at the top. The more money goes in to the PL the more they pay players. This cascades down through the divisions. A player who has played for even one of the "lower" PL teams is then reluctant to accept lower wages in the championship and so it goes on down to us. This forces teams at our level to try to pay wages they can't really afford. Don't pay the wages? Get relegated. Go bust! Simples. Somewhere it falls apart, as we are only too aware.

As for Iggy's comment. All I've pointed out is the simple economics and maths. I agree it's expensive these days, especially when the football on show is particularly crap. Argyle fans have justifiably greater expectations as well. Another problem is everybody wants immediate success. This can be laid at the door of the PL and television as well.

If I thought Argyle would get Pompey sized crowds if the price was lowered to say £15; I'd be all for it but I don't think it would happen. Unless it coincided with an upturn in performances on the pitch. Scraping one nil wins isn't good enough. One word that hasn't been mentioned is ENTERTAINMENT. That has been sadly lacking apart from the odd occasion for quite a few years now.

BBC News is running this story and have shown what it's like in Germany at the moment. I think they were at Borussia Dortmund. 80,000 crowds at ( I think) £15 a ticket. They were talking to British football fans who are going to watch football in Germany rather than pay the prices the London clubs or Man U. want to charge.

If you live in the South East and can get cheap travel through the channel tunnel or cheap flights from a major airport; I suppose it could be attractive. I would need convincing that the cost of travel plus the ticket, food and drink wasn't as expensive as an English game though.

Angry wrote:

The cost of food and drink is disgusting at Home Park and always has been. Also, for the money your paying the quality of the food should be alot better too. OH and also x2 check and see what sells in terms of food and drink and make sure there is enough to meet demand ie you dont sell out of steak n kidney pies before halftime.

Yeah, i will go along with the food and beverage prices at HP. Rip off is what i'd call it..

I am a POTD and you are looking at hefty sum of cash to go and watch Argyle of a Saturday afternoon.

Richard Blight wrote:

BBC News is running this story and have shown what it's like in Germany at the moment. I think they were at Borussia Dortmund. 80,000 crowds at ( I think) £15 a ticket. They were talking to British football fans who are going to watch football in Germany rather than pay the prices the London clubs or Man U. want to charge.

If you live in the South East and can get cheap travel through the channel tunnel or cheap flights from a major airport; I suppose it could be attractive. I would need convincing that the cost of travel plus the ticket, food and drink wasn't as expensive as an English game though.

I've just checked the train line Europe website and I can travel on a Friday from London to Dortmund in December returning on the Sunday for £70. I did a day return to Manchester from Bournemouth yesterday in advance for £76 and the journey was an hour less. Granted you spend on hotels etc but given the travel, the experience and everything involved I can see why some fans go say 3 times a year rather than witness 46 games if the shite we have to put up with.

Sounds like you have a really site phone Dicky!

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

Sounds like you have a really site phone Dicky!

Enter the Goat....

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Yep, so we've charged the same as Man City, I don't see it as such a bad thing as many people do.

Dig below the surface & it means Premier league football is still accessible to everyone and that it hasn't quite yet been gobbled up by the prawn sandwich brigade.

If the difference in price between the top flight & League 2 reflected the difference in quality, then surely you'd build a class system within football, the richest going to Liverpool and the poorest going to Tranmere? I'm thankful it isn't completely like that & at the moment anyway, all levels of football are accessible.

I think this should be more about saying well done Man City than slating Argyle.

An interesting way of looking at it Cobi.

Pitbull wrote:

Yep, so we've charged the same as Man City, I don't see it as such a bad thing as many people do.  

Dig below the surface & it means Premier league football is still accessible to everyone and that it hasn't quite yet been gobbled up by the prawn sandwich brigade.

If the difference in price between the top flight & League 2 reflected the difference in quality, then surely you'd build a class system within football, the richest going to Liverpool and the poorest going to Tranmere? I'm thankful it isn't completely like that & at the moment anyway, all levels of football are accessible.

I think this should be more about saying well done Man City than slating Argyle.

£20 is still a rip for league 2 football no matter how you look apon it

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Coventry In response to the Article have decided to scrap the £2 match day price rise on tickets. Small steps so hopefully more including Argyle follow suit.

As someone said earlier, what about the emotional cost of following a team like Argyle, it must surely take ten years off your life !!

Unbelievable prices. Over here, I can go to watch Caen in Ligue 1 for 9€ (£7-ish) for low key matches. The very best seats in the house for the next home league game at Caen only cost 33€ (about £25)! I'm looking forward to going there for a cup game in a couple of weeks, reckon I'll get in for 4-5€. A couple of years back when I was a student, I got in to see a game for 2€50, great value!