The Premier League is back with a bang and you might be interested in taking in a game at some point this season.
But working out how much a ticket costs can be confusing, never mind the logistics involved in actually getting one.
For some clubs, there is a handy price table on their website but finding the answers for others involves asking them directly. One team — newbies Luton Town — have still not yet decided their prices despite the season having kicked off.
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The Athletic’s Matt Woosnam recently analysed the price of season tickets — giving access to each side’s home league games — which showed 17 of the 20 Premier League clubs are raising prices for the 2023-24 season.
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Looking at regular tickets reveals that the cheapest Premier League offering for an adult is £9 ($11.50) for an extremely restricted view at Liverpool, though good luck actually getting your hands on one. The most expensive ticket, excluding hospitality, costs £240 in Chelsea’s plush Westview area. These are unusual extremes, though, and most tickets cost somewhere in the £40-55 range.
Stamford Bridge is one of the country’s most expensive stadiums to watch football (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)English football operates very differently from many businesses.
For example, many American sports operate “dynamic pricing” models, which work rather like airlines and hotels. This means prices fluctuate according to supply and demand, so you might be able to pick up a bargain for an unfancied fixture but if you want good seats to a high-profile game you could end up spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
This approach is alien in English football, where clubs have deep cultural roots in the areas they are based. This makes ticket prices a very sensitive subject. The biggest clubs charge far below the highest possible price that the market might support.
A consequence of this, though, is that it is often very hard to actually buy a ticket at the clubs where demand greatly outstrips supply.
The most expensive non-hospitality ticket at Liverpool, for example, is £60. At Manchester United, it is £70. Both clubs could easily fill their stadiums while charging far more but have calculated that the outcry would not be worth it. The reputational risk of alienating fans and damaging the foundational ideals of the club is not worth an extra bit of revenue in the long term.
Buying a paid membership is a prerequisite to buying a ticket at many clubs, particularly the biggest names. At these clubs, tickets never go on general sale to non-members for Premier League games.
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It is possible to buy tickets at inflated prices on third-party resale sites, though this carries risk, and all clubs caution fans against it. In American sports, dynamic pricing means tickets can often be bought on the day for most games for a huge price.
Premier League attendances have gone up and up over the years and stadiums are rarely far off 100 per cent capacity. For some teams, getting a face-value ticket requires good timing and a lot of luck, but at plenty of others, it is easy enough.
Many clubs have different “categories” of games, with contests against the league’s big boys being significantly more expensive than fixtures against less glamorous newly promoted sides.
As a general rule, tickets on the “long” side of the ground are more expensive, while those behind the goal are cheaper. This is because a side-on view, especially in the middle, gives a fuller view of the action. The fans in the cheaper seats behind the goal are generally noisier and create more of an atmosphere, which you may deem a good or bad thing.
One interesting distinction is how far in advance clubs offer tickets for sale. Most put home tickets on sale roughly a month before the game, with various windows for different categories of fans — members, general sale, and so on.
Some clubs put all the tickets up for sale at once at the start of the season. This is the case for many of the “bigger” clubs in the league, perhaps because fans travelling from afar might appreciate more warning.
This is less of an issue for clubs with smaller overseas followings. Local fans generally appreciate the increased flexibility of not having to decide right now if they want to go to a game nine months away.
A few caveats before the numbers begin. This analysis has been greatly simplified because weaving in every aspect of ticket pricing for each club would make this piece the length of a book.
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This is only about Premier League tickets. Cup games are often cheaper and, for the biggest teams, an unglamorous cup fixture against a lower-league opponent is the easiest type of match to get a ticket for. The opposite is true for, say, a Champions League semi-final.
These figures also exclude Luton, who are scrambling to get Kenilworth Road ready for the new season and are playing their first few games away from home.
All prices listed exclude any booking or delivery fees and relate to standard adult tickets — all clubs have discounts for various categories, such as children and pensioners. Hospitality tickets — which can be purchased at every stadium, often at fairly short notice, for hundreds or even thousands of pounds — are also not included.
Some clubs, such as Aston Villa, Chelsea and West Ham, have a category sometimes known as “soft hospitality”, where fans get things like padded seats, access to fancier bars and restaurants, and perhaps a modest freebie like a programme or scarf. These are sold as regular tickets and do not include food and drink, so are counted as regular tickets for this article.
Another caveat is that, for some clubs, the cheapest adult ticket is in the family stand, which is only accessible to people with children. An adults-only group would have to buy a marginally more expensive ticket.
Finally, this is about home tickets. Away tickets are capped at £30 throughout the league, a hard-won concession fought for by fans who spend huge sums following their team around the country. As a casual fan, it is usually much harder to get an away ticket than a home ticket, and loyalty points and booking histories generally contribute to getting access.
For the biggest clubs, there is virtually no chance of getting an away ticket in the Premier League without resorting to ludicrous prices in the unregulated world of third-party resellers.
The cheapest ticket
The cheapest ticket prices in the Premier League can be deceptive because these are generally limited and hard to get hold of.
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Perhaps surprisingly, the cheapest are at one of the most famous football stadiums in the world, but the caveat to Liverpool’s £9 tickets at Anfield really stares you in the face.
The view from the seats in the top corners of the Main Stand is heavily restricted. There are only a few hundred of them and, by contrast, the neighbouring spots sell for £54. Nevertheless, ticket prices at Liverpool are competitive by Premier League standards — the most expensive adult ticket in the Kop End is £44 and junior tickets throughout the ground cost £9.
However, it is hard to actually buy one of these tickets. Fans must buy a membership and then enter a ballot to be in with a chance of getting a seat at a ground that is always full, and will remain so despite a recently expanded Anfield Road stand.
Liverpool have deep working-class roots and the city has been through a tough time economically in recent decades, meaning ticket prices at Anfield can be a hot-button issue. The club’s American owners backed down in 2016 after major protests followed a decision to sell some tickets for £77. This season, they raised the price of the most expensive tickets for the first time in several years but only very slightly.
There are only a handful of places where an adult can take in a Premier League game for less than £30: those restricted seats at Anfield, a ‘category C’ game in the family section of the Main Stand at Bournemouth (£28) and, surprisingly, a small number of £28.50 seats at Arsenal and £25 seats at Chelsea. Good luck getting your hands on those.
Though you can pay £9 for a view of a pillar and a bit of the Anfield pitch, across Stanley Park at Everton, the cheapest ticket costs £55, the highest figure in the league, which feels particularly steep given the team’s recent struggles on the pitch.
However, the club has a completely flat pricing structure, with everyone paying the same no matter who the opponents are or where in the ground they sit, and a maximum price of £55 is less than most clubs.
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For most teams, the cheapest seats in the house cost somewhere between £35 and £42.
Anfield’s Main Stand houses the cheapest seats in the Premier League (Barrington Coombs/Getty Images)The most expensive tickets
Padded seating. Two 360-degree bars. Open views across London.
These are the things that await you if you buy a ticket in the Westview at Chelsea, a segment of the West Stand Upper Tier catering to a premium crowd comprised of season-ticket holders as well as fans buying for individual matches.
This is not full hospitality — there are no food and drinks included in the ticket price — but the costs are eye-watering, up to £240 for a single game.
Chelsea, with their glamorous west London location, have always been a club associated with high-rollers, meaning this sort of scheme is less controversial at Stamford Bridge than it might be elsewhere. The 40,343-seater Stamford Bridge is small for a club of their size so Chelsea are heavily incentivised to squeeze as much money as possible from fans who are willing to pay it.
The very high price means tickets in this section are fairly easy to buy, even for high-profile matches. For those on a lower budget, there are plenty of tickets on sale at far lower prices, including £25 for a restricted view seat in the Matthew Harding Lower for a ‘category B’ game. That price is unusually low, though, and most cost £50 to £65.
Demand far outstrips supply for cheaper seats and a membership is a pre-requisite.
Five clubs — Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and West Ham United — sell some tickets that cost a three-figure sum.
Tottenham have been criticised for very high ticket prices, with seats at a ‘category A’ game costing between £65 and £103, with only a small number available at the bottom of that range.
You may have noticed something in common with these expensive clubs: all are based in London, where the average income of locals is higher than across the rest of the country. The capital also hosts a wealthy tourist crowd who would think nothing of spending such sums on what might be their one chance to experience Premier League football.
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An honourable mention goes to Brentford, also based in London, but where the most expensive tickets cost £65.
The top ticket prices at Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City are notably reasonable in comparison.
The £105 tickets in the Riverside Stand at Fulham are particularly startling given the club has been in and out of the Premier League in recent years, and supporters’ groups have criticised the prices. A small discount is available for club members.
It is possible to make arguments for and against these sorts of prices. On the one hand, they are outrageous and price out ordinary fans. On the other hand, if a small number of people are willing to pay a big premium for certain games, it brings in money that may help keep other ticket prices lower — most seats at Fulham cost far less.
Outside London, fans are more price sensitive and if a club puts prices too high they are likely to simply go unsold. The award for the cheapest highest-priced ticket goes to Sheffield United where it costs £46 for the best seats in the house at Bramall Lane.
The London premium may have a big impact on English football in the longer term. In theory, clubs in the wealthiest region of the country can raise far more money on matchdays, allowing them to spend more on players and infrastructure.
Membership prices
Bournemouth stand out in the Premier League because they do not have a formal paid membership scheme but rather a system of ‘Cherries Points’ where fans accrue credit that enables them to buy tickets for more in-demand fixtures.
All other 19 clubs, though, charge for memberships, which give priority access to tickets.
In many cases, there are various tiers of membership, which often include various branded items such as water bottles or scarves alongside priority access. We have used the figures related to the cheapest possible tier of membership that grants priority access.
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For example, a ‘Lite’ membership at Manchester United, giving priority ticket access and little else, costs £35. More expensive memberships are available that come with merchandise and season ticket priority.
Membership pricing is fairly consistent, with most clubs charging somewhere between £35 and £40. Perhaps surprisingly, the cheapest (apart from Bournemouth) is Arsenal’s, at £34, despite the extremely high demand for tickets, which are some of the most expensive in the league.
Again surprisingly, the outlier at the other end is Crystal Palace, where membership costs £60. A cheaper tier costs £25 but this only allows the ability to buy up to four tickets and does not include priority access.
One unusual example is Nottingham Forest, where a basic membership giving priority access costs £35, but a special membership at £95 gives fans a guarantee of access to tickets for each home game of the season, sort of like a game-by-game opt-in season ticket.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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