Is the price right?

Last updated : 18 April 2012 By Jacob Daniel

The quiet announcement that slipped onto the Notts County official website earlier really shouldn't have come as a surprise. Football is getting to a point where, just as politicians mournfully suggest is happening with society, it is creating a 'squeezed middle' situation. With the Premier League gobbling up all of the money in English football like Darren Caskey let loose in Greggs, and the non-leagues moving towards the more sustainable, less ambitious form of ownership seen at clubs such as Wrexham, Enfield and the reformed Chester, those of us stuck in the middle of the Football League are facing an economic crisis. It is, therefore, little surprise that Notts have announced they are planning to raise both season ticket and match day prices for the new season, whether Keith Curle's side pull off an utterly remarkable promotion or not.

In the rather murky pseudoscientific world of economics, the two causes of the 'squeezed middle' phenomenon are supposed to be a widening gap in income between the top and the middle and also the rising costs of staple goods - in life that'd be your insurance and your créme fraiche, in football it's VAT and wages. A similar thing can be seen in English football at the minute, with Premier League incomes spiralling out of control as a result of the top division's Mr Burns-esque control of television income. One of the obvious, and understandable, arguments against increasing ticket prices at clubs like Notts is that they are becoming as expensive, if not more, than equivalent tickets at clubs like Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic in the Premiership. Whilst paying the same for what is, essentially, an inferior product initially seems perverse, the logic behind it does stack up. For Notts, match day income and season ticket sales are everything. They make up the bulk of the club's income and are by far the most important part of the balance sheet. For clubs like Blackburn, this isn't the case. Their slice of the pie for the occasional televised Super Sunday game where they roll over and have their belly ticked by Arsenal is so obscene that it makes the income they receive from ticket sales pale into insignificance. When Blackburn are relegated, if they struggle to get back up, their prices will simply have to rise significantly once they run out of parachute payment pity. Besides - these clubs still can't fill their grounds regularly despite such reasonable prices. Perhaps this is because they only appear reasonable when juxtaposed with clubs demanding £25 to watch League One football. 

The rising cost of running a club like Notts is also a factor that is contributing to rising ticket prices. Whilst the club initially absorbed the rise in VAT, that was simply never going to last, whilst the ever increasing wages being required to secure even mediocre third tier footballers (we imagine John Spicer's weekly pay packet would make your eyes water) mean that Notts have to balance the cost of chasing success against affordability for the fans. The fact is, any price rise is only ever going to have a negligible effect on crowds. Clubs at this level have a core support who will pay the extra two pounds a match without asking any difficult questions. The problem comes when you're attempting to attract new, less partisan support - which is where these price rises seem to clash with the 'Project 150', err, project, through which Notts aim to sell 7,500 season tickets for next season.

In fact, the entire project seems utterly muddled and not really directly enticing those who should be its target audience - floating fans, those who attend the odd game each season and those who don't live locally to Meadow Lane. These are the people who, when they're not dictated by an inexplicable emotional bond or are already paying huge fuel prices or train fares to get to Meadow Lane, will be repelled by the increasing cost of watching football at Meadow Lane. The main incentive of 'Project 150', should we reach the ambitious targets of just over 5,000 season tickets and then 7,500 of them (which we won't, judging by this new announcement and the club's silence) is £150 'credit' that is then placed on the season ticket cards, to be used in the club shop or on the concourses at Meadow Lane. This isn't offering an incentive to any of those groups we should be targeting.

I should know - I fall into them. I live in East London and am a student, but manage to get back for around half of the home games. I haven't bought anything from the club shop in years and generally don't get much beyond a beer at the ground because most of the food tastes like, and has the texture of, sawdust. And I do have an emotional bond to this club, unlike many of the people we'd be hoping to sell these season tickets to. To someone who comes to watch us occasionally, or indeed never does, the offer of what amounts to essentially little more than free stuff from the shop and the bar will never be enough incentive to part with £400 in the first place. Quite simply, you have to target these people by offering them a great deal to start with, and £300-400 to watch third tier football just is not a great deal. I have no idea whether offering half price season tickets, or something similar, would have led to us selling double last season's total - enough to make it worth while. I imagine it would've been a struggle, but things probably would've been going more promisingly than they seem to be right now. I, for one, would've bought a season ticket if it was considerably cheaper and would've begged, stolen and borrowed to find the train fare. What I am unlikely to be doing is parting with £30 every other week because I can get a free black and white gnome when I get there. I am probably not alone - and that's just those of us who already support the club and go to games whenever we possibly can. For floating fans, the offer of a lifetime season ticket and a replica shirt of a product that they are yet to be convinced by will never be enough to convince them to part with a sum that could see them get a Playstation 3, a whole host of games in which they could play as the pixelated version of Ishmel Demontagnac and have a bit of change to spare.

You can't really blame Notts for raising prices - they're being dictated by the economic conditions of football right now. But you do get the sense that, whilst they're trying to increase the supporter base and sell a huge amount of season tickets at the same time, they find themselves stuck between a rock and a very hard place.