By Paul Nicholson
February 3 – Premier League Liverpool have unveiled a revised match day ticket pricing structure which includes a rock-bottom £9 ticket price as well as priority access to 20,000 tickets for local fans. The club will have an additional 8,500 tickets available for matches next season with the opening of its new Main Stand.
The focus on getting more local people to match days is in response to growing concerns among local fans that they were getting priced out of matches by travelling supporters, with a significant number coming from outside the UK.
Ian Ayre, chief executive officer at Liverpool, said: “With the opening of our expanded Main Stand, the Club is heading into a new chapter and we want as many of our fans right there with us to support the team at Anfield…
“The feedback has been clear that having more local and young people at Anfield is a priority and we are delighted to be launching these new ticketing initiatives. The redevelopment of our Main Stand and increased capacity has given us flexibility to freeze or reduce more than half of all tickets across the stadium which is reflected in our longer term plan to give fans more choice on what price they pay to attend a game.”
But the new pricing structure has not been welcomed by the Liverpool Supporters’ Committee who were part of a working group that spent a year looking at pricing.
Their core recommendations were for at least 70% of the ground to be at affordable pricing (£30 in their view), an end to the categorisation of matches (where tickets for ‘big’ matches are priced more expensively) and an increase in the number of young supporters.
They say that with match day ticket revenue becoming an increasingly less important club revenue stream with bumper broadcast deals kicking in next season, the club could have afforded to relax pricing.
The £30 price ticket they recommend under the current structure is the cost of the cheapest ticket in the Kop for a category c match. Taking an average ticket price of, say £50 (a low end estimate), the loss to the club (if 70% of tickets were priced at £30) could be as much as £700,000 per match (£13.4 million across the Premier League season).
For their part the club says that 64% of season ticket prices have been frozen or are being reduced.
“Season ticket prices will range from £685 (£36 per game) to £1029 (£54 per game). Match day tickets have also stretched making the cheapest match day ticket just £9 and the most expensive £77 depending on seat location,” said a club press release.
The under 17s junior season ticket price remains unchanged at £180 (£9.47 per game), while a new Young Adult price band has been introduced for 17 – 21-year-olds with season ticket holders getting a 50% discount on the full adult price.
Once completed the £114 million new stand will increase the capacity of Anfield to about 54,000, making it England’s fourth largest club-owned stadium behind Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City.
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