Prices at Arsenal: going up, but in the end old age starts to catch up too.

 

• The gap is fairly ludicrous but second place looks on for the third time

Ruminations by Tony Attwood

Last season Liverpool finished third in the league and won the League Cup, being knocked out of the FA Cup by Machester Un.  And they made a loss of £57m, which was about five times more than the loss they made the previous season. But then at the same time their overall income rose by around 3.5%.  Commercial income rose by around 11% to a record high as they went into new commercial partnerships and upped their level of retailing.

But there is actually a bit of trickery in all this, because when a player is bought for say, £100m, and put on a contract of (for example) four years, what actually happens is that this cost is put into the accounts at £25m a year.   Quite likely the club also pays for the player over several years, rather than forking out £100m in one go.  This is called amotrisation, and it cost £114m for Liverpool last season.

Pull that lot together and Liverpool, on what seems to be the penultimate year of their drive to winning to league, cost them £57m.  Around half the clubs lost that, or more than that.  Manchester U, now, as I am sure you will have realised, utterly out of financial control and sackiing everyone they can lay their eyes on, lost £131m.

Which most people would probably call rather careless.

Arsenal are also losing money, and are putting up their prices next season by 3% to 5%.  In January 2025, the UK’s inflation rate was 3%, so it is a real price rise.

Of course, having put up prices one year, it is easy to get a lot of good publicity by not putting up prices the next year, and so Arsenal’s price increases are being compared with the fact that Liverpool, Brentford, Wolverhampton and West Ham Taxpayers Stadium who are not putting up prices next season.   The price rise for season ticket holders will be around £55, although how much more it actually is, depends on where the seat is. Prices of season tickets will range from £1126 to £2112.

This might seem a bit cheeky given that Arsenal earned £160m more in the last financial year than in the one before.  And this is where it all gets a bit sticky because there are ceaseless, remourceless and endless demands for Arsenal to buy a new striker, which is what the fans who are influenced by the media, demand.  But such a buy will cost a lot of dosh, and of course might not work.   (As we worked out a while back, the majority of big-money transfers don’t actually improve the team).

Amidst all the talk of money there is another change happening, in that the season ticket for next season will be just for the 19 league games, and not include any Champions League or cup matches.  It’s an idea the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association have been pushing for a long time, and at last it has come to pass.  So more cup tickets will be available on sale, and there will be more pressure on the manager to prioritise all cups, including the League Cup.  Although there will be an option for season ticket holders to buy four European games in their seat, when they buy their 19 league games.

The demand that supporters use their tickets continues – if you have a season ticket, you must attend the match yourself or offer it back to the club to sell on.  If you do that, you tick the box – whether the ticket sells or not.  But here’s the twist… it is not widely advertised, but it seems that if the match has not sold out, then you can’t put your ticket up for sale through the club.

Of course, Arsenal are owned by Kroenke Sports and Entertainment and so we might expect comparisons to be made with the NFL where prices have constantly risen year after year as the sports have become thoroughly middle-class.   It would seem that the original image of football being a working class game was abandoned long ago.

And as a personal aside, perhaps I might add that I write all this knowing that there is every chance this will be my last as a season ticket holder at Arsenal.  Fortunately, that is not for any financial reason – the pensions are keeping me afloat, and they haven’t carted me off to a OAP home yet.  But I do have a medical condition which can happen at my sort of age, which is affecting my vision.   I can still see, but not really see the far side of the pitch as well as I would like, and it’s reducing my enjoyment of being at the game.

So, I’ll probably say farewell at the end of the season and also save about £35 travel costs for each match.  Plus £10 for something awful to eat and drink in the ground.  But given I first went to watch Arsenal as a child, with my dad in 1957, it will be a wrench.  On the other hand, at least there’s a lot on TV.  And I can always go and watch my local non-league team where the grandstand comes almost up to the touchline.  And if I can’t see the far side of the pitch too well, well, it doesn’t really matter.