Football finance expert Kieran Maguire says price cap is needed for away tickets in the EFL

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire says a price cap, similar to that set for the Premier League, is needed for away tickets in the EFL.

He argues that fans of clubs with large and dedicated fan bases, are being “scalped” with high away ticket prices, especially given the popularity and demand for matches involving these teams.

Maguire suggests that without a cap, clubs are exploiting the fan interest in these popular teams to boost their finances, charging significantly more than for other teams in the same division.

He supports the idea of implementing a price cap to protect fans from these excessive charges, ensuring fairer pricing across the league.

Kevin: David Stevens is our next question. “David Stevens is a Plymouth Argyle fan. David says, I’ve noticed that my club, Plymouth Argyle, charge a £1.50 booking fee per ticket if you purchase a ticket over the phone or in person. I’d like to know if there’s an accounting or tax benefit to the club in charging a separate booking fee per ticket. It’s my observation that additional booking fees tend to upset fans. You’re too right, David. And you wonder why why guy would then just charge, say, £26.50 for a ticket rather than £25 plus £1.50 booking fee. Would this be a privilege of charging the booking fee here, or would it be the outside agency that they’ve sourced to sell the tickets?”

Kieran: “Well, it will probably be the agency because what will what Plymouth will do is that they will use a third party service who will clearly charge them a fee for the processing. So that’s one way of recovering it. There’s no accounting or tax benefit as such because, ultimately, Plymouth Argyle will have received £26.50 in total.

“I know this upsets some fans of Premier League clubs who are away fans because we’ve got the £30 cap on tickets. But you normally end up having to pay 31, 32, whatever it’s going to be because the away side will now charge you a processing fee. And, again, that tends to be on a per ticket basis. So even if I’m going with 5 or 6 of the mates, then, you still pay an extra 1 pound per ticket per fan who’s attending.

“So it’s certainly a way of getting around caps. But I think from a transparency perspective, there’s a lot to be said for just quoting the all in fee. As anybody who’s ever tried to buy concert tickets recently, everything gets loaded on top. There’s a rest I know when when we did our show at the Lowery, we wanted to charge a figure, and then there was a booking fee on top which seemed excessive. And then there was a Lowery restoration fee, and and it became substantially higher.

Kevin: “But, David does make a point though psychologically from a fan’s point of view. If you if you were charged £26.50 for a ticket, you go, alright. Fair enough. That that £1.50 on top of £25 somehow seems a lot of money, and and you always assume that the club is trying to get away with something somehow, don’t you?

Kieran: Yes. I think we have become very drawn, distant, and cynical in relation to the way that organisations extract further and further cash from us. And, this is one way of doing it. As as somebody that, found out that I thought I’d renewed my broadband supplier, and I was 48 hours late and my broadband went up from £25 a month to 58. These are just the the typical things that big corporations do.”

Kevin: “Yeah. You can claim on that, though, can’t you?”

Kieran: “Well, I can claim I’m pissed off. Yes. That’s that’s how it goes.”

Kevin: “Well, by sheer coincidence, our next question, Kieran, from Jamie Lyon is about exactly what we’ve just been talking about. Jamie says, why do you think the EFL won’t implement a price cap on away tickets like the one in place in the Premier League? Interesting question, Kieran.”

Kieran: “I think it’s a very fair question as well. We we talk about the Premier League and the EFL making decisions. It’s not it’s club owners. And I do think it’s important to separate out the two elements. I suspect that the administrators that the executive at both the Premier League and the EFL, will have been saying, the way fans contribute towards the atmosphere. That they do make a difference, especially given that the EFL has now signed some improved TV deals.

“So there is a very good case on having a price gap, and it and it does seem idiosyncratic that we can go to a Premier League match at Old Trafford or the Etihad or Anfield or Emirates, whoever it’s going to be, and we’re paying £30.

“And yet, you’ll be going to some matches in the Championship. I think the highest away fees, something like £47 for walk-up fans, to be fair, rather than those paid in advance.

“It is difficult to justify. I think there are some clubs in particular are being very disadvantaged by this. So I would imagine the likes of Leeds and Sunderland, for example, who have got huge fan bases, who traveled to all the away matches.

“I know that Leeds in particular have tried to arrange reciprocal arrangements, which a reciprocal arrangement is being arranged, of course, but have tried to arrange a reciprocal scenario that if their fans are going to be charged so much, then they will charge exactly the same fee because they feel that their fans were being ripped off. Some clubs have gone along with that and others haven’t.

“So that’s where we are. I guess you can look at the importance of matchday revenues to clubs in the EFL. In the Premier League, it’s £1 in every 7 is coming through the turnstiles.

“That increases to £1 in every 5 as far as the Championship is concerned. When you drop down to League 2 and the the contribution from the TV deal decreases, then it’s effectively it’s £2 in every 5 is coming through the turnstiles. A

“And home clubs or home club owners don’t want to take away the the financial benefit that that brings if you’ve got, for example, in League 1, it was Birmingham City or Wrexham or Stockport. Those clubs are doing really well at present and have got big fan bases, Bolton.

“There’s there’s huge clubs in in the lower leagues whose fans do travel in numbers, and they are being scalped. There’s no doubt about it.

“And people see it’s a bit like that, it’s a bit like that episode of The Simpsons when a Hollywood film studio came into town, and all they started to do was doubling.”