Ticket pricing survey – full results
The announcement of the match ticket prices for the first game of the season against Liverpool created quite a stir amongst Fulham fans. With adult ticket prices in the range £65-£100 outside of the family area, supporters who aren’t in the position to have a season ticket found themselves looking at an outlay significantly higher than the highest priced matches from last season (£35-£50) and at a similar level to clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs and West Ham.
With our inbox overflowing we relayed your thoughts to the Club, but wanted to dig into the detail through a survey which took place from 17th to 24th July. A massive thank you to over 2,200 of you who responded. To put that into context, it’s over 10% of home capacity at Craven Cottage and so highly representative of your views.
What was initially striking was that the strong views about match ticket pricing were held by both season ticket holders and non-season ticket holders alike, with over half of respondents being season ticket holders.
Whilst predominantly male (92%), replies were received across the age groups, with the largest number in the range 22-39.
Satisfaction with prices
The key question we asked was for your level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the prices as announced for the Liverpool match. 82% of you said that you were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied compared with only 7% satisfied or very satisfied.
Perhaps more importantly from a Club perspective, and of concern to us as a Trust because of the risk of alienating long-term Fulham fans, we found that these prices would reduce our non-season ticket holders’ likelihood of attending games, with 65% of attendees planning to attend fewer matches and almost a quarter planning to attend no matches at all.
Your ticket price suggestions
Most clubs, including Fulham, have tended to categorise games by popularity of the opposition, with the Liverpool game known to be viewed by the Club as a category A+ game (£65-£100 adult, non-family area). Since the announcement of the Liverpool prices, we have now seen two additional lower pricing categories for Brentford and Brighton which we suspect are category B (£50-£80) and C or D (£30-£60) respectively.
Most fans don’t really view matches at this level of granularity, so we asked you for your view of a reasonable adult ticket price in each of the stands for a high category (e.g., Liverpool) and a low category (e.g., Bournemouth) game. We took the (mean) average of your responses to summarise your views. It is worth comparing these numbers with a pro-rated new season ticket seat price (one 19th of a new season ticket, not a renewal) which is also included in this table.
Memberships
Fulham’s memberships cost £50 for adults and provide a number of benefits, the most notable being priority access to home match tickets with a £5 discount. We asked for your views on the price of the membership and the discount provided, with the results being relatively evenly split.
Suggested ticketing options
Aside from reducing prices, there are a number of more innovative models the Club could adopt should they choose to, which might help supporters who cannot afford match ticket prices at the Liverpool level. We asked for your thoughts on these and found that there is a broad spread of views, but with the emphasis still on higher discounts for single match tickets.
Next steps
The FST meets regularly with the Club, both through our formal monthly meetings and also in between these on a range of topics. We asked you for your thoughts on next steps should ticket pricing remain an issue, with the largest number supporting further dialogue, followed by a visible matchday protest.
Thank you once again for your contributions to the survey and all the comments received which we are still reading. The next opportunity to continue our dialogue with the Club on ticket pricing will be on Wednesday 10th August at the monthly meeting and we will feedback to members shortly afterwards as usual.
