The Great Football Ticket Price Heist

My housemates and I were in the mood for some football and, as one of them is a program seller at Reading, we decided on a midweek trip to the Madejski Stadium to watch the Royals take on the might of Doncaster.

Thankfully we ended up watching the goal fest of the Champions League instead because of the ridiculous ticketing policy in place at Reading and other clubs across the country.

To buy our £18 ticket for a bitterly cold Tuesday night game, we were told we would first have to register ourselves with the Reading FC Membership Club which would cost £3.

OK, so it’s only £3, but when you consider I probably won’t go to another game at the Madejski until next season, when I’ll have to sign up once again, it doesn't seem fair.

Also consider how many different teams you may want to go see purely on a neutral basis to watch some football, six maybe seven different teams, now imagine each of them require you to pay a membership fee before you buy a ticket.

Don’t think each of these clubs will charge you just three measly quid, that’s by far the cheapest I’ve heard, the basic red membership for Arsenal is £30 and that doesn’t even guarantee you a ticket.

Take an average of £15 per membership for each club you go to and you can add an extra £100 a season for your ticket costs over the season, an unnecessary extra? I would argue that it is.

I have no argument against the option of club memberships being available for the more “loyal” fan so that they can give themselves more chance of getting a ticket to see their club but mandatory memberships to buy one ticket is just bleeding the last few pennies from the fans pockets.

Since when was the game so inaccessible to Average Joe football fan?

In an economy that is struggling to survive, leisure pursuits will be the first to drop off of the spending lists as money becomes tighter and tighter, people will start to consider whether the extra £5 to see a game is worth it when you can catch the highlights on Match of the Day.

Football clubs need to realise that fans are starting to desert them, take a look at the past seasons at the Riverside, JJB, and Reebok Stadiums to name just a few stadiums that struggle to put bums on seats, and those are sides in the Premier League.

Fans don’t need more reasons not to go to live football matches, they need to be encouraged and reminded why they used to come.

Newcastle and Bolton have shamelessly offered free Pints of lager to all fans that turn up by a certain time in an attempt to improve the atmosphere within their grounds.

A novel idea but at the end of the day there is one thing that will guarantee fans flood back through the gates, lower ticket prices and to be fair some clubs have made a start, Sheffield United offered children, students and concessions seats to any category C game for £5.

Ticketing policies infuriate me because in most cases they are entirely unnecessary, with clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal, teams that have season ticket waiting lists that stretching for the best part of a decade, do they really need to restrict the sale of tickets any further.

Whatever happened to “first come, first served”?