English Football Prices Out Loyal Fans as Commercialization Surges

Good morning. The men’s football season is reaching its climax, with Arsenal crowned Premier League champions this week and Aston Villa winning the UEFA Europa League last night. The men’s FIFA World Cup is imminent.

But fans in England face mounting pressures: soaring costs inside and outside stadiums, kick-off times shifted at broadcasters’ whim, and a growing perception that clubs seek to replace ‘legacy fans’ with premium-paying ‘high-yield customers.’

For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Guardian football reporter Jacob Steinberg about the ‘remorseless commercialisation’ of the game and whether football is permanently pricing out the very people who give the sport its soul. First, the headlines:

UK politics | Andy Burnham is backing Shabana Mahmood’s controversial changes to the immigration system, his allies said, dealing a blow to Labour members hoping to soften them.

AI | The Electoral Commission has called for new legal controls over misinformation from AI chatbots after a thinktank found they made serious mistakes during the recent Scottish election.

Ebola | Doses of a potential vaccine against the Bundibugyo virus causing an Ebola outbreak in central Africa will not be available for six to nine months, the World Health Organization said.

Middle East | Israel’s far-right national security minister sparked a diplomatic crisis by publishing footage of Israeli security forces abusing international activists detained while trying to sail to Gaza with aid.

UK news | Rainwater harvesting, grey water use in homes, and an urgent campaign to reduce water usage are vital to prevent shortages of 5 billion litres per day by 2055, the government was told.

Whether paying for a season ticket waiting list, shelling out for multiple expensive streaming services, or discovering a junior concession has been scrapped, the cost of being a men’s football fan is reaching a breaking point.

While the ‘product’ has never been more popular globally, the local match-going experience is treated as an inconvenient relic. ‘It feels like fans are being price-gouged left, right, and centre,’ Steinberg says. ‘Clubs have to be really careful. Part of the Premier League’s attraction is the atmosphere of the English crowd, and you risk losing that by chasing the one-match-a-season transactional fan.’

The Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) launched the #StopExploitingLoyalty campaign to combat what it describes as a coordinated attack on match-going fans. Premier League clubs increasingly squeeze core supporters through price hikes, with 19 of 20 teams raising season ticket prices this summer. A seat at Tottenham’s stadium costs up to £2,367, and at the time of writing, the team’s Premier League status for August is not guaranteed. Liverpool’s ticket prices have risen more than 800% since 1990.

Most controversially, the FSA highlights moves to scrap or drastically reduce concessions for children and senior citizens, effectively pricing out the next generation and loyal long-term fans in favour of more affluent, one-off visitors. The trend extends beyond the Premier League. I paid £408 for one adult and one U18 season ticket at Leyton Orient for the 2023/24 season; by 2026/27, that will be £551, a one-third rise in just two campaigns.

Steinberg says the ‘expanded and quite bloated 2026 World Cup’ will exemplify the worst of this trend.

‘Tickets for the final are going for about $10,000. People who normally follow England to every tournament are thinking this might be too far; it’s hard to justify that level of expense,’ Stoneberg says.

The issue extends beyond match tickets. Host cities set exorbitant fees for public transport to stadiums, contrasting sharply with events like Euro 2016 in France, where a matchday ticket included free public transport.

The weekly match-going experience for supporters also feels degraded. Paying for a place on a season ticket waiting list became widespread in the 2010s, as did becoming a ‘member’ for a fee to have even a chance of attending a match. The days of simply arriving at a top-flight game and paying cash at the turnstiles are long gone.

Steinberg says fans perceive that some clubs would prefer fewer ‘legacy supporters’ in their stands. ‘These are local people who have been going for years,’ he says. ‘They have their routine: they go to the pub with mates, they go to the game, then they go home.’ Without on-site refreshment purchases pre-game, ‘they don’t spend loads in the club shop because it’s not an event.’ There is a definite feeling that clubs would like to squeeze them out, impose dynamic pricing, and attract more ‘transactional’ fans who spend big once a year.

At Manchester United’s Old Trafford, 1,100 supporters are being shifted from their longstanding seats near the dugout so those seats can be converted to higher-priced hospitality packages.

Matches are moved for television schedules with little regard for whether away fans will have trains available to return home afterward.

‘If I look back 30 years – and I’m probably showing my age – people’s first live football experience was often turning on Channel 4 on a Sunday afternoon for Football Italia,’ Steinberg says. ‘That was a way for people to connect easily without paying.’

The Champions League on ITV allowed for that connection. ‘Now you have to pay, and the competition is so drawn out that I wouldn’t be surprised if people only properly connect with it during the latter stages,’ Steinberg adds, if they can afford it.

A symbolic low point came this week: for the first time in the competition’s history, the men’s UEFA Champions League final – this year featuring Arsenal – will not be free-to-air. Without the correct TNT Sports subscription (between £20 and £27 per month depending on provider), fans cannot watch. It is a far cry from when the biggest games were shared national moments rather than premium add-ons. ‘It feels like things are being chipped away,’ Steinberg says.

One consequence of competition law preventing football authorities from selling rights packages to a single broadcaster is that armchair fans must pay for multiple channels. The Premier League, for example, is broadcast across Sky Sports, TNT Sports, and Amazon Prime. While competition among broadcasters increased, consumers now pay nearly 60% more than five years ago.

The EFL made waves this week by kicking Southampton out of the Championship playoff final for allegedly spying on semi-final opponents. It was rare to see a football authority act so swiftly and decisively.

While the EFL acts with a heavy hand, the Premier League’s biggest cases drift. Manchester City’s charges remain a permanent shadow over the league’s integrity, and Chelsea’s transition from the Abramovich era appeared to result in a financial hit rather than a sporting one. Fans of Everton and Nottingham Forest watched their clubs be docked points for financial breaches, while the ‘big six’ seemingly operate under different rules. The scales appear permanently weighted.

There are even moves to allow leagues to stage lucrative competitive fixtures abroad, potentially locking out dedicated domestic fans from one of their team’s home competitive matches.

Can non-league and women’s football grow to fill that gap? As the top flight in England strives to become a global entertainment product for tourists, the future of community-driven, affordable matchday may lie further down the pyramid. Cash-on-the-door matches at levels like the Isthmian League or Northern Premier League occur nationwide every Saturday afternoon.

There is also an opportunity for the Women’s Super League (WSL), where the connection between pitch and terrace has not yet been commodified out of existence, and matches are widely available on free-to-air streaming platforms.

It need not be this way. The FA is working with UEFA to ensure that tickets for Euro 2028 include 40% of tickets in two categories: one costing less than £30, the other under £60. In Germany, clubs must have a fan-owned element as the majority shareholder. The cheapest season tickets at major clubs can be reasonably priced: a season ticket at Juventus in 2025 was about £280, at Atlético Madrid £242, and at Bayern Munich about £150. The cheapest Premier League season ticket was £345, and that came with the penalty of watching West Ham.

Clubs and broadcasters know they have a captive audience. Football is uniquely ‘sticky’: fans do not simply switch allegiance to a cheaper rival because the price of a pie or a TV subscription rises by 20%. That deep-rooted loyalty is being weaponised against fans.

But as the ‘concessionary ladder’ is pulled up and the stadium experience is hollowed out by technology and exorbitant travel costs, football is testing the limits of that devotion. At some point, the ‘global product’ risks becoming a sterile show performed in front of half-empty stands or silent tourists, having finally priced out the people who provided the noise in the first place.

In the weeks leading up to the World Cup, soccer writer Jonathan Wilson will explain how the tournament became a global phenomenon with cultural, social, and political weight extending far beyond each game.

Sign up for the newsletter here.

‘London Records in the 90s? COCAINE.’ That is just one of many responses Daniel Dylan Wray received when asking former artists and staff about the eclectic, hard-partying record label behind Goldie and Bananarama.

Lucinda Everett, newsletters team

Guardian Australia’s Carly Earl and Matilda Boseley make a fun duo in a video investigation on who is better at spotting AI images – a picture editor or an internet addict.

Martin

Palm-flanked pools and political plotting. Tom Phillips visits the five-star JW Marriott hotel in Caracas, where US officials, diplomats, and spies have gathered to decide Venezuela’s fate.

Lucinda

Would you take film recommendations from Charli xcx? Cassidy Sollazzo examines celebrities acting as public taste-setters on social platforms.

Martin

I enjoyed George Monbiot’s excellent column about the electorate’s failure to punish Nigel Farage and how leaders often profit from the chaos they sow.

Lucinda

Football | Aston Villa won their first European trophy in 44 years with goals from Youri Tielemans, Emi Buendía, and Morgan Rogers sealing a 3-0 victory.

Tennis | The world’s top tennis players plan to protest over prize money by reducing media appearances at the French Open as their public battle with the grand slams intensifies.

Cycling | Ecuador’s Jhonatan Narváez edged out Spaniard Enric Mas on Wednesday’s stage 11 to win his third stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia, while Afonso Eulálio retained the leader’s pink jersey.

‘Burnham backs Mahmood’s plans to tighten rules on immigration’ is the Guardian’s front page today.

The Telegraph says ‘Don’t cap food prices, Bank warns Reeves,’ while the Times’ headline is ‘Bank chief joins attack on freezing food prices’ and the i Paper writes ‘Food price cap retreat after backlash from supermarkets.’ Similarly, the Financial Times runs with ‘Supermarket backlash forces Reeves into U-turn over grocery price caps.’ The Mirror’s take is ‘Labour’s happy shoppers.’

The Daily Mail splashes on ‘Putin jets menace RAF place with crazy Ivan stunt,’ and the Sun, on the same topic, says ’20ft from World War 3.’

The Daily Express front page is ‘No thank you to another PM who does not back women,’ and Metro says ‘Burnham rival’s rants revealed.’

Competing in the pro-doping Enhanced Games

Olympian Max McCusker tells Nosheen Iqbal about his decision to sign up for the Las Vegas games where performance-enhancing drugs are encouraged.

A bit of good news to remind you the world is not all bad

Punk songs about pensions, unaffordable care home fees, and recycling frustrations may sound like a storyline from Riot Women, but the NaNaz are a real-life group of women in their 50s and 60s booked solid at clubs and festivals.

The Newport-based musicians worked as nurses, foster carers, and ice-cream van drivers, inspired by earlier generations of female punk artists such as X-Ray Spex and the Slits. ‘We like to write and perform songs that tell the truth about things we feel really strongly about,’ says bassist and vocalist Anne-Marie Bollen. The band’s spontaneity and fun also attract younger audiences to their shows.

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent every Sunday.

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to entertain you throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

Martin Belam’s Thursday news quiz.