Will Arsenal tickets ever get cheaper?

Chief Executive of Arsenal Ivan Gazidis (C)

It’s been over a week since the Q&A with Ivan Gazidis and there’s something that is still on my mind. Ivan touched on stadium size and ticket prices and as someone who is waiting for their chance to get a season ticket, I wonder if there will ever be an affordable way to watch Arsenal live on a regular basis or if I’ll ever get a chance at a season ticket.

I’ve been married almost a year now and children are the hot topic in the Cowan household at the moment. Whilst the idea of being a dad scares the living daylights out of me, I also get a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about taking my child to Arsenal matches and hopefully having season tickets and making it a “thing”.

With over a third of the capacity of the stadium ahead of me on the list, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to take my children to matches every week. If I am honest with myself I know it probably won’t happen.

Buying Barclays Premier League football tickets isn’t extremely difficult and despite what people say about Arsenal I don’t think the price of our season tickets or individual match tickets aren’t good value for money when you consider the price of football in England in general. Despite what the media says us Gooners know that Arsenal are cheaper per game than Spurs and we know our cheapest tickets rival most other big clubs.

Getting to 15-20 matches a year without a season ticket does become quite expensive however. Ivan’s response to a question at the Q&A got me wondering if it would ever be cheaper. Here’s what was said:

Q: You’ve spoken a lot about Bayern Munich tonight. Is there any chance we’ll hear you say what Hoeness said recently about ticket pricing?

Ivan Gazidis: They’re in a different environment in the Bundesliga. You look at this year’s Champions League final between two great clubs and two great teams. I think there’s a lot we can learn from the Bundesliga and I’ve been a big fan for over a decade.

Their model on ticket pricing is very different and the way they make their money is very different. They have relatively low ticket pricing and very high commercial revenues. One of things that was very clear to me was that we were too dependent on local revenue streams and now we’re moving towards “spreading the burden” and diversifying those revenue streams.

We hadn’t really grasped the international value of our brand and commercialised that. We’ve relied heavily on our ticket revenue streams, but as our commercial revenues grow and our broadcast revenues grow, it balances our revenue in a better way and it takes some of the pressure off.

I cannot tell you that we’re going to go the whole way of the Bundesliga, because their model is very different, but if we develop our commercial revenue streams, it takes the pressure off of local revenues.

And when asked about what would happen if FFP wasn’t introduced he said this:

We don’t control it so we can’t rely on it. What would we do differently? Nothing. We’d do the same things in both worlds, just like Bayern are doing. They have revenues of around £300m and we’re nearly there. We’ve every chance of competing in an unregulated world like they do.

And when questioned on potential stadium expansion he said:

We’re in a good place with capacity and due to the stadium design, it’s not easy to extend anyway. We think 60,000 is about right for us.

I took a few things from that. Firstly, I’ll probably never get season tickets whilst my potential future child/ren is/are young and won’t be able to build that tradition of going to the football every week with dad. So if I want to watch live football in 2013, I will have to buy tickets on a match per match basis.

Secondly, the club could reduce ticket prices in the future. Gazidis spoke about Bayern a lot and a magic figure of £300m which would keep up competitive at the highest level season after season. He also spoke about diversifying our revenue streams and “spreading the burden” so we are not over-reliant on matchday revenue/ticket sales.

This gives me some hope that club may strengthen their commercial position and use that position to reward the fans with lower prices. Some may call me naive for even contemplating it but I am a big believer in Arsenal Football Club and I trust them to do the right thing for the club. If they can do the right thing for the club and reduce ticket prices I am sure they would do that.

What do you think? Am I just a crazy fool or are the club about the football more than the money? Do you think we’ll ever see ticket prices drop at Arsenal? Can we have cheap tickets and be successful or are they mutually exclusive?