Workers priced out of the stadium

Football since its inception as a professional sport in the 19th century has always been a game loved by, followed by and ingrained in the culture of the working class. Throughout most of the history of the professional game the very sport depended on the thousands of working class folks who would spend a small part of their hard earned wage on a ticket on the terraces to cheer on their local team. 

In the twenty years since the founding of the Premier League in 1992 the price of a ticket to watch a football match has soared to such an extent that many working class people, who made the sport what it is, cannot afford to watch their team as they are priced out the stadium. For example the cheapest ticket to watch Manchester United at Old Trafford was £3.50 in 1989, today, in the 2011/2012 season the cheapest ticket is available for £28 which represents a rate of inflation of 700% and the cheapest tickets are only available in the lower tiers of the east and west stands not in swathes as they were on the terraces of old.

At Arsenal the situation is even worse. In 1989 a ticket to a match against one of the top clubs such as Chelsea, Tottenham or Manchester United  cost £5. Now at the Emirates, home of footballs first £100 seat the cheapest ticket to a category A match is £51 which represents inflation of 920%.  At Liverpool the cheapest season ticket in 1989 was £60 whilst today it’s £725, inflation of 1108%. This story of ever more extortionate ticket prices is the same at all the clubs in the Premier League.

Although the prices have risen attendance at premier league matches is higher than at any point since the 1950’s. The atmosphere at football matches today is markedly different to that of old, the passivity of the crowd compared to the roars of the crowds of old is telling of the gentrification of football as matches become increasingly attended by a middle class audience paying the price working class fans cannot.

Children of the working class are especially adversely affected by the gentrification of the game as parents simply cannot afford to pay for a ticket for them and their children. Premier League surveys for years show a consistent reduction in the proportion of young people, who pay full price from 16. By 2006-07 the proportion of fans aged 16-24 was 9%; in 2007-08, the figure was 11%. The average age of the fan at matches in now 41.

The exclusion of working class fans reflects the fact that modern football clubs are run more as businesses than ever before and as such are subject to the logic of doing things only for a profit inherent in capitalism, even if it means the people who made the club can no longer afford to watch their team. Football, at its best is a beautiful thing, sport bordering on art, and the shared collective experience of going to cheer on your team with your friends, family and fellow fans is simply one of the pleasures of life, the current developments in the sport however are proof that capitalism will wreck anything to increase the profits of a tiny few financiers.