Some issues transcend the biggest rivalry in the Premier League, as the sight of a Manchester United banner outside the Kop on Sunday underlined. Before Liverpool and United shared a point inside Anfield supporters of both clubs joined forces to make one about rising ticket prices and the attack on concessions in the world’s richest football league.
“There is an irony to this,” said the United fan Steve Crompton. “What we are trying to protect is us going into the ground and hating each other for 90 minutes, and yet here we are. This rivalry is part of the Premier League’s product. If you fill the ground with corporates the atmosphere will eventually disappear and so will the ‘legacy fans’, as we get labelled.”
Crompton is the head of media for FC58, an independent coalition of United supporters, and one of six members who travelled through the snow to Anfield on Sunday to protest alongside Liverpool counterparts from the Spirit of Shankly (SOS) supporters’ union. None of the FC58 contingent could get tickets for the game but all wanted to add their voice to the growing demand for Premier League clubs to stop exploiting loyalty, as the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) campaign describes it. “£66 [crossed out] your debt not ours” was the banner aimed at Sir Jim Ratcliffe and United’s decision in November to scrap members’ concession tickets of £40 for adults and £25 for children for the rest of this season.
“The amount that [decision] will raise is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, yet the damage it is doing is alarming,” Crompton says. “We’ve been told by the club on a few occasions that it is all about our local fans and we are the beating heart of the club, then they slap you with a £66 ticket. That’s a [164%] increase for kids. It’s an absolute disgrace.”
Ratcliffe’s marginal financial gain attracted widespread condemnation but is far from the only example of supporters being squeezed in the Premier League. As representatives from SOS and FC58 made clear, while protesting in freezing conditions, the #StopExploitingLoyalty campaign is not only about two of the league’s global powerhouses. Crystal Palace were the only Premier League club not to increase ticket prices for this season. The average increase was 6.7%.
Nottingham Forest raised their prices by an average of 20% while Aston Villa marked their return to European football’s biggest stage by charging fans up to £97 for a Champions League game. Tottenham announced last year that no new senior concession season tickets will be made available from 2025-26, while existing senior season-ticket holders will see their 50% discount drop by 5% a year to 25% in 2029- 30. The next Premier League broadcast deal will rise by 17% to £12.25bn for the 2025-28 cycle.
The FSA says there is no justification for the escalating prices and attack on concession tickets, even accounting for the rise in clubs’ operational costs. Brentford have frozen season-ticket prices for next season and introduced a £10 cap on tickets for their junior fans at away games and for under-18s coming to the Gtech stadium with visiting clubsamong visiting fans. Brentford would agree. The Bees have not only frozen season ticket prices for next season but introduced a £10 cap on tickets for under-18s, home and away.
“Clubs have the power to make the game more affordable for everyone and to challenge rising costs for supporters and we want to play our part,” said Brentford’s chief executive, Jon Varney. “We hope other clubs follow this initiative.” Sunday’s protest was the latest SOS have organised with rival clubs this season. Manchester City, Brighton, West Ham, Tottenham and Arsenal fans have joined forces with the Liverpool supporters’ union, and Everton and Fulham fans staged a protest outside Goodison Park in October.
“We conducted a survey of our members last year to ask if we should be campaigning for lower ticket prices and 92.1% said yes,” said Paul Khan, the chair of SOS and a member of Liverpool’s supporters board. “That gave me a mandate to approach the club, but when I did, the club told me tickets were going up 2% and that was it. There was no consultation at all. Turnover is £600m. The extra £2m is a drop in the ocean. There’s a cost of living crisis going on. There’s a Fans Supporting Foodbanks collection point outside the stadium. They are punishing the people who are the lifeblood of the club.
“It was £36 for my first full season ticket [in 1983]. Now it’s £735. Compare that with going to the pictures. It was around £2.50 to get into the pictures in 1979 and less than a pound to get into the match. Now it’s £16 to go to the pictures and £47 to go to the game. The lifeblood of every single club are the local fans and clubs are trying to price them out. I met New York City supporters’ club on Friday. They were brilliant and donated $4,000 to Fans Supporting Foodbanks. But one of their members paid $500 for a ticket for the United game. Another mate of mine from Baltimore paid £700. A working-class fan of any club cannot afford to pay that.
“The club sells the atmosphere. Everything is about the Kop – the merchandise, the marketing of the atmosphere at Anfield, even selling the corporate tickets for the new Anfield Road Stand, which says you’ll have an unbelievable view of the Kop. But they don’t want fans who aren’t paying £500 for a meal or who don’t go in the club shop. Prices have risen over 800% since 1990. That is not sustainable.”
Liverpool will discuss next season’s ticket prices with their supporters board on 20 January, having promised “meaningful engagement” after last year’s criticism. The FSA campaign will continue, however, as it seeks to involve more supporters’ groups and exert the kind of pressure that resulted in the £30 cap on away tickets in the Premier League.
“The £30 cap happened because of fans campaigning together,” says Gareth Roberts, an SOS committee member. “And that is what we are trying to do again. The FSA has raised the issue with Richard Masters [the Premier League chief executive] and he has promised to take our concerns to the Premier League clubs. United scrapping concessions is a worrying sign, but there are worrying signs right across the league. It has felt for a while now like clubs are coming together behind the scenes to test the water on what they can get away with.
During Covid they told us football was nothing without fans. Now they are starting to rip us off again.“It seems that it’s a race to get the richest fans in the ground. Have your people who will pay £500-600 for a corporate experience but remember the community that you are a part of and make it accessible to them. We need to put tribalism aside and stand up to what is going on. Otherwise you are doing the bidding for billionaires. And they don’t care about generational fans.”
• This article and headline were amended on 6 January 2025. Liverpool’s ticket prices have risen by more than 800% since 1990, not since 1992 as was previously stated.
