Football supporters up and down the country have no doubt been dancing jigs of delight at the news that the cost of watching live football has fallen.
And the clubs that have seen this fall in revenue will surely be teetering on the brink now that the price of tickets in England’s top four divisions has fallen by an average of nearly 2.5%.
Well, not quite. It’s all relative, and it comes following years of inflation-busting price rises.
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The more pertinent statistics will come over the next few years when we will be able to see if a new pattern emerges. Are these figures a temporary blip, or are the methods by which clubs finance themselves going through a change?
The stats come from a survey published by the BBC. It looked at 10 divisions – the 92 league clubs in England plus the Conference, the four divisions in Scotland and the women’s Super League.
The research looked at prices for the most expensive and cheapest season tickets and adult match-day tickets. It found that average prices for these were all down across the 166 clubs.
Sports minister Hugh Robertson welcomed the findings – the fact that he even felt the need to comment on the figures highlights how important the issue is to many people – but he put them into context.
“It is good news for fans but it does come after a long period of incremental rises year on year,” he said.
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“The key thing is that it is replicated in years to come. I think clubs are beginning to understand what fans are going through and to adjust their prices accordingly.”
That’s a possibility, but don’t count on it. There would need to be many more annual falls to cancel out the increases of recent years.
It’s something that is exercising the Football Supporters’ Federation. The FSF welcomed the headline news on the fall in prices, but it made the point that any decrease was relative.
“While we’re obviously pleased that ticket prices haven’t risen above the rate of inflation again, a relatively small percentage drop in prices doesn’t suddenly make football affordable for all,” said FSF chairman Malcolm Clarke.
“Ticket prices were starting from a very high base and a slight decrease doesn’t change that.
“More fundamental change needs to happen if football doesn’t want to lose more match-goers to the comfort of their sofa or the pub. For many clubs, particularly those in the top-flight, gate receipts don’t even come close to making up the biggest proportion of revenue.
“The Premier League has received a £2.1 billion increase in media rights recently, from £3.4bn to £5.5bn over three years. It’s an enormous figure – enough to give every match-going fan £50 at every single game. There is simply no justification for the prices that some clubs charge.”
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Mr Clarke’s comments about the Premier League lead to another point – that the headline of an average price cut of 2.4% in England masks a more complex picture.
In the Premier League, for example, the average price of the cheapest season ticket has actually risen by 4%. Just try telling the loyal fans of THOSE clubs that prices are plummeting.
And all this from the clubs that can most afford to slash their admission prices, thanks to the billions pouring into their coffers from those broadcasting rights.
The most recent Deloitte review of Premier League finances found that the combined revenue of the 20 clubs in 2011-12 reached £2.36bn. And while that figure relates to the season before last, Deloitte has helpfully also published its predictions for both 2012-13 and this campaign – and (surprise, surprise), its predictions show a further increase in revenue during both seasons.
The latest surge in money is thanks to the most recent television deal, with the likes of Sky, BT, the BBC and overseas broadcasters behind a £600 million increase in the income the clubs are receiving this season.
That’s right – there is an extra £600m flooding in on top of the huge sums already being chucked at the Premier League, which is why Adam Bull, senior consultant in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, is predicting combined revenue of more than £3bn for the 20 top clubs this season.
On the face of it, then, there should be plenty of scope for ticket prices to be subsidised by this extra revenue. So why have the cheapest Premier League season tickets become more expensive?
It’s partly because the culture of community has long gone at so many of our top clubs. There might still be a family feel in the lower divisions, where admission remains relatively cheap, but that sentiment has long gone elsewhere.
Most of our big clubs are run by chief executives whose dual aims are to maximise income and bring on-field success. A packed-out stadium with the money flowing into the coffers completes half of that equation, and these people are not in the business of trying to find out how they can cut prices.
And given the ongoing popularity of the product they are selling, why should they?
Far from putting people off, last season’s record admission prices in the Premier League failed to prevent the highest “league capacity utilisation” (bums on seats, in plain English) since the competition began life in 1992. There were record season-ticket sales of 476,776.
It was also the 16th consecutive season in which stadium occupancy was above 90% and suggests little waning in the enthusiasm of supporters to watch top-flight football. So with record numbers of people flocking to matches, why do we think prices will fall?
The reason that average prices have fallen across the 166 clubs in the BBC survey is mainly due to attendances being significantly down in the Football League. The 72 clubs in the Championship, League One and League Two suffered an average fall of 5% in people going through the turnstiles last season. In other words, it’s all about good old-fashioned market forces – and market forces that are behaving very differently in the top flight.
And it’s not as if the extra money the top clubs are receiving is lingering in some low-interest account.
The recent transfer window saw the Premier League clubs spend a staggering £630m on players – an increase of nearly 30% on a year earlier and £130m more than the previous highest transfer-window figure.
The likes of the FSF can protest as much as they want, and with good cause, but the sad fact for the hard-pressed fan is that the extra money has already been accounted for, on transfer fees, wages and agents.
As the Football League figures show, prices will fall when people stop going to games. But as long as people continue to flock to Premier League matches, don’t hold your breath for prices starting to fall there.