Season ticket holders across Premier League clubs feel they are under siege, with many believing clubs no longer want them at matches. While exploiting loyal fans is not a new complaint, supporters say the current approach is different and "deliberate".
Fans feel deliberately excluded, not just exploited
"There's a perception that there's a different strategy at work," says Daniel Fitzpatrick, a lecturer at Aston University and co-author of a recent paper on the changing face of football fandom. "It's [the feeling that] we're not being exploited, they just don't want us to go anymore."
"There is a general sense that, yes fans have been financially exploited for a long time, but this is different because fans at some clubs feel they're being deliberately excluded, or priced out rather than exploited, particularly season ticket holders," Fitzpatrick adds. He and his colleague Mark Turner have been speaking to season ticket holders to gauge the current mood.
"It's the sense that they're not pushing fans to the hilt of affordability, but beyond it. There was a real feeling of disquiet among the fans we spoke to," he says.
Manchester United touting crackdown sparks fury
When Manchester United announced an investigation into ticket touting, they could not have envisaged the full-blown PR disaster they were inadvertently setting into motion. The club's attempt to "protect fair access to tickets for genuine Manchester United supporters" concluded in early September, with 685 season tickets banned and much ill feeling generated.
"The approach the club has taken has been 'ban first, ask questions later'," says Chris Rumfitt, a spokesperson for Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST). "They've banned people and then asked them to prove that they haven't done anything wrong, which isn't normally how things work in this country. The burden of proof works the other way around."
"There's a massive amount of discontent among all fan groups, it's really united the fans. The way the club has gone about this is completely wrong. It has spread further mistrust," Rumfitt adds. The heavy-handed approach, coupled with communications threatening season tickets would be 'deactivated' for not buying a ticket to see Champions League minnows Sabah, has further damaged Ineos' standing at United, with protests held before the recent Manchester Derby.
"The touting exercise in the last few months has led to the most rancorous discussions between fans and the club since the European Super League," Rumfitt says. "Only that has produced a worse reaction. Of course, with that the club backed down and it went away, but with this the club has not u-turned."
Rising prices and 'Stop Exploiting Loyalty' campaign
For the majority of supporters of Premier League clubs, the summer didn't get off to an auspicious start. Fourteen of the 20 clubs raised the cost of season tickets for the 2026/27 campaign, many of them doing so by more than the rate of inflation. Many older fans have also been irritated by the move to fully digitised season tickets for the first time.
There is a huge variance between the cheapest Premier League season ticket, at Newcastle's St James' Park, which costs £380, and the most expensive, at Fulham's Craven Cottage, which is £3,192. At defending champions Arsenal, the cheapest season ticket is £978; the most expensive is £1,835.
The Football Supporters' Association (FSA) has launched a campaign entitled 'Stop Exploiting Loyalty', which warns "the traditions, values and supporter culture that have made English football the envy of the world are under threat from escalating ticket prices, commercialisation and corporate greed". The FSA further argues that: "Football was once a family tradition, with generations standing or sitting together, but that is increasingly unaffordable at the top level as the game becomes a luxury good, inaccessible to many within the communities that clubs are supposed to represent."
Five clubs – Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and Tottenham – froze season ticket prices this summer. But the protest by Liverpool fans against proposed ticket price increases at the end of last season led to owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) making a partial U-turn.
'Disneyification of football' and the tourist fan
Before the advent of the Premier League in 1992, ticket prices were set simply to cover costs. Since then they have become demand-based. "Clubs used to reward patronage and wanted people to bring their extended family to matches," Fitzpatrick argues. "That was the model. Now it isn't that. Top clubs don't want families to sit together. They want people to buy tickets on an individual basis, come a couple of times a season. The family-orientated appeal of the Premier League has changed since Covid, I think."
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire explains the appeal of the one-off visitor: "The yield per fan per match is far greater for a fan coming for a one-off match. Not only does it generate more money from the ticket sale itself, that fan is far more likely to go to the merchandise store and spend."
"Local fans might go to the mega store once per season, therefore the monetisation of the non season ticket holders is far greater. They arrive at the stadium earlier and leave later because it's a special experience for them," he adds. Maguire describes it as "the Disneyification of football, from a working class cultural asset, an essential for so many people".
Using Manchester United as an example, Maguire notes that despite only having 20 home matches last season, "their average yield per fan per match went up from £89 to £104". He says they are using "price as a vehicle to squeeze" long-term season ticket holders out of Old Trafford.
Chelsea's 'padded seats' and empty seats
Chelsea is another club where ticketing remains a bone of contention. The digitisation of season tickets means supporters can no longer simply hand their physical season ticket to a friend if they cannot attend a match. Instead, they must resell their ticket through the club's official ticketing platform. The recipient must have forked out a membership fee starting at £15 for access to these tickets.
Mark Meehan of the Chelsea Supporters Trust explains: "They feel that long-term they'll no longer be a part of the Chelsea eco system. If you're a season ticket holder or club member and you're going regularly, you may not be the kind of person that they necessarily want every week. They want churn in the seats, different people sitting there on a frequent basis, because they will spend more money than the existing cohort."
Meehan points to Westview as an embodiment of what many Blues fans believe to be the club's long-term strategy. The club's marketing notes access to "a modern concourse", "a vibrant market hall" for food and drink and "three large screens", but Meehan says it boils down to "nothing but padded seats". Prices range from £225 to £625, depending on the prestige of the fixture.
"People were being asked to pay £300 a ticket for the recent Brighton game," Meehan says. "Surprise surprise they had to drop the price to £285 soon after because there wasn't a big enough audience at that price. It's supply and demand. The supply is there, the demand isn't, so that seat remains empty. We haven't had a full ground of over 40,000 for three seasons. It's only slightly under, by a few hundred, but I feel every single seat should be filled for every home game."
American ownership and the future of fan loyalty
Eleven of the current 20 Premier League clubs are majority owned by Americans. Fitzpatrick says the "critical mass of American ownership who also have experience in American sports franchises" have brought about "a cultural shift" which has influenced the league beyond just the American-owned clubs.
The £4,000 'personal seat licence' that Manchester United consulted fans on as part of the planning for their new stadium tells a story. Rumfitt describes the proposal as "absolute anathema", but that might not stop Ratcliffe from pushing ahead, while the building of a bigger stadium would provide a clean slate on which to start with a much smaller percentage of season tickets.
Asked if protesting can reverse the tide, Maguire gives a cynical response. "I think it will slow down the process, but that's all," he says flatly. "There is no doubt where the direction of travel is, especially for the elite clubs. How many matches has John Henry attended at Anfield or Stan Kroenke at the Emirates? If you've got no connection, no engagement with fans, why should you care about their welfare, or the importance of Arsenal or Liverpool to these people? Because you don't know who they are. As far as you are concerned they are just pots of money to be fleeced."
