Football attendances in Europe – Arsenal in Europe – the final part: how much does it cost? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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Victory Through Harmony
By Walter Broeckx
As I was working on the articles about the football grounds in Europe I had to do a lot of research. And the more numbers I got the more interesting it became. I found it particularly interesting to see who was having the highest number of people in their stadium and who can fill their ground the most.
As some people said that it also maybe would be interesting to see how much a ticket cost in all those grounds and see if this has any influence on the number of people. We all know that Arsenal has some of the highest ticket prices in the EPL. But how do we compare to the other big clubs in Europe?
So on another search I went. Not the search for the Holy Grail but the search for the tickets. And some clubs are very open on this but some clubs you really have to dig deep to find their prices on their websites.
The first problem I had was how do you start comparing all those prices. As every ground is different and some teams really can make a mess of their prices. There are teams who have more than 20 different prices for one single game. And others only have 3 categories of prices.
In order to make the article a bit understandable I decided to cut it in a somewhat more normal situation. So I will not take prices of seats next to the president of the club. I will only compare the prices of the tickets that are on sale for the average fan who wants to see a game of his favourite club.
So for each club I will give a maximum price and a minimum price for the seats and if they have standing places I will also give those. And then I will give an average price of tickets and by this I just took the highest and the lowest added them and divided them with 2. I know this is not perfect but believe me otherwise it would be totally unreadable. All the prices are in £ and believe me this was a hell of a job to get them all in this currency as most prices were in euro first. But this is an Arsenal supporters blog so I thought it would be best to give the ticket prices in £.
So here we go with the prices of the clubs which have ended high in the last two articles which you can find HERE and HERE. And the table is ranged from the highest average price to the lowest.
| club | capicity | Highest price | Lowest price | Average price | Standing |
| Barcelona | 99354 | 119 | 45 | 82 | |
| Inter Milan | 80065 | 143 | 18 | 80,5 | |
| Real Madrid | 80354 | 101 | 59 | 80 | |
| AC Milan | 80065 | 126 | 12 | 69 | |
| Arsenal | 60355 | 66 | 33 | 49,5 | |
| Bayern Munchen | 69901 | 59 | 25 | 42 | 12 |
| Marseille | 60031 | 50 | 25 | 37,5 | |
| Manchester United | 75957 | 47 | 27 | 37 | |
| Schalke 04 | 61482 | 42 | 25 | 33,5 | 12 |
| Borussia Dortmund | 81264 | 40 | 23 | 31,5 | 10 |
| Ajax | 52960 | 37 | 14 | 25,5 |
So if you look at this table you can see that Arsenal has the highest average price in the EPL clubs listed here, but that in Europe we certainly are not top in this league.
But let us look at the other teams and those who can remember the percentage of how clubs fill their stadium will notice that this table is looking to be the opposite of that other table. The clubs that had the most unsold tickets are the clubs who have the highest prices for tickets.
Barcelona top the league and yes the money for those big signings and the wages for those players do have to come from somewhere. It looks like the average José Catalan has to dig deep in his pockets to see them play. So no surprise when you see big gaps in the stadium. And on my survey you could still buy tickets for their next home game.
In second place we find Inter Milan and their fans must pay for winning the CL. They are just behind Barcelona but we must note that they also do have very cheap tickets available. But those are mostly in the upper tier and from there you see some small players running around and then you go home and watch the game on TV to see what you couldn’t quite work out when you saw it in the flesh.
And for a club with a lot of the superstars you also must pay a lot to see Real Madrid play.
AC Milan is the next on the list and to see Flamini warming the bench you have to dig deep in your pocket . So one could spend his money on something else if you ever are in Milan.
And then there is a big gap and in 5th place we find Arsenal. On average some £32 cheaper than Barcelona but also £25 more than the average price paid by the fan in Amsterdam.
Bayern Munich is next on the list and the Bavarian fan still has to pay over £40 to have a seat in the Allianz Arena.
And then we find two teams close to each other who happen to play each other in the CL in the next weeks. Marseille and United have almost the same price for a ticket.
And then we have Borussia Dortmund who have the second biggest attendance if you remember my second article in this series and where the fans don’t have to pay that much money to see them play. Borussia Dortmund is currently top in the Bundesliga.
And the lowest prices are paid by the Dutch fans from Ajax Amsterdam. They have the lowest highest price (is this okay in English? – fine Walter I’m right with you, Tony) and their average price looks real low. But Ajax is also a team in a relative small league and they cannot afford to ask higher prices I think.
A general conclusion is that the fans in the Bundesliga pay the lowest price for a top league. And in Spain you pay most for a two team league. If I had to make a choice I know which I would prefer.
But if we see at the table we could say that to win the CL and the league you must ask the fans a lot of money. So if we were to raise our prices at the emirates with some 60% we would be able to compete with them. But we also would be facing a lot of empty seats I think.
Raising the prices brings you more income per seat but will it mean more money in total? I don’t think so. As it would drive a lot of people out of the stadiums at the end of the day. A difficult choice many clubs have to make: asking more money with the risk of losing a part of the supporters. Of asking less money and hope the fans come back.
But in fact this is a question the board of Arsenal doesn’t have to ask themselves for the moment. We fill our stadium almost at the maximum capacity so no problems in this area for the moment.
Here’s a complete index of all the recent stadium stories
Which clubs in Europe are most successful at selling every ticket?
In Europe, which football clubs fill their grounds the most?
The biggest football stadia in Europe
Attendances in the EPL – comparing clubs across four years