London Times' Journalist Matthew Syed has taken the dispassionate capitalist view on the price of tickets in football.
On whether a football club is a social and communal club or merely a business - issues that we have interrogated here and here - Syed has come down on the latter side of that debate.
He writes in his Times' column that:
What this tells us is that prices are not too high. How could they be when they are being purchased in their entirety by willing buyers? It tells us something else too: if prices were lowered, the number of people attending games would be precisely the same as today.
The only difference is that waiting lists would grow. This is what happens at every club, whether on the Continent or elsewhere, when prices are reduced below the market rate. After all, prices are a rationing mechanism. If you do not ration by price, you have to do it some other way.
He also criticised local fan groups for campaigning for lower prices, arguing that they are in fact campaigning for privileged access to games for themselves, and excluding other paying customers. It is the free-market capitalist interpretation of a club being merely a business; a spectacle to attend a few times a year, be entertained and subsequently go home and allow another customer take your seat two week's later.
Syed reduces football to a fairly simple supply-and-demand interpretation:
Nobody is forcing fans to go to games. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads. It is a voluntary transaction and, given that demand outstrips supply, there is only one conclusion: it represents good value for money.
Whilst Syed is making sound financial/economic sense, it is an argument that hinges entirely on treating clubs as businesses. We don't think they are. To quote Tim Vickery, football clubs are businesses which primarily strive to win trophies rather than turn a profit.
Most controversial are these lines from the penultimate paragraph:
It is like lobbying a large supermarket that has just made healthy profits to make massive cuts to food prices. Without any increase in supply, it would simply lead to painfully long queues, black markets, racketeering and, possibly, violence.
The violence theme pretty much came out of nowhere and seemed unjustified.
Here is some of the polarised online reaction:
The arrogance of some trying to bluntly say football is "a business like any", stupidly ignoring relevant contexthttps://t.co/dJYPPUwVgR
— Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) February 10, 2016
@MiguelDelaney @DanielHarris Yeah, pre match scenes at affordable football matches in Spain & Germany are like something out of Platoon.
— Calvin Betton (@Calvbetton) February 10, 2016
@MiguelDelaney @DanielHarris Am I being thick or is this person (who?) basically saying 'don't drop prices because the plebs'll fight'?
— Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) February 10, 2016
I get the feeling Matthew Syed doesn't much like the football experience.
— John Brewin (@JohnBrewinESPN) February 10, 2016
I'd have read Matthew Syed but the market told me not to pay to read the Times.
— Richard Whittall (@RWhittall) February 10, 2016
[Times]
