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The Business of Football: Inside UEFA’s ticket price cap vote and the player break puzzle

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The Business of Football: Inside UEFA’s ticket price cap vote and the player break puzzle

In a week when fans were asked to pay double the advertised price to see a band that has not released a decent album since 1995 — after waiting in an online queue for five hours — and Aston Villa marked their return to European football’s biggest stage after a 41-year absence by raising their usual adult ticket price by 55 per cent, it is only fair we highlight some good news on the cost-of-fun front from an unlikely source.

On Monday, UEFA — the people who brought you £2,900 “prime seats” for the 2024 Champions League final after delivering very sub-optimal fan experiences at the previous two finals — announced it was capping the prices that home clubs can charge away fans in its three men’s club competitions this season.

To be fair, European football’s governing body tried to do this for the 2019-20 season, but that initiative was scrapped when Covid-19 hit, as the pandemic closed stadiums around the continent for a season and left clubs chasing every cent and penny they could find when the gates reopened.

But much has changed since then, most notably the competitions involved, as they have grown from two to three and have then themselves grown to 36-team affairs, with more games and a funky format. Given all that, and the corresponding 30 per cent increase in media rights income, UEFA has decided to try again and actually go a bit further.

The 2019 caps were €70 (£59) for an away ticket in the Champions League and €45 (£38) in the Europa League, but this season clubs will only be allowed to charge a maximum of €60 (£51) in the Champions League, €40 (£34) in the Europa League and €20 (£17) in the Conference League, with that falling to €50/€35/€20 next season.

In its press release, UEFA said the decision had been made after “extensive consultation” with the European Club Association (ECA), the body that represents clubs that participate in UEFA competitions, and Football Supporters Europe (FSE), the umbrella group for supporters’ associations.

It added that the move has been “endorsed by the UEFA Club Competitions Committee”, which includes senior representatives from 16 leading clubs and “is part of wider, collective work to improve (the) fan experience in European football competitions”.

This is clearly good news when viewed against the backdrop of price rises and the shameful phasing-out of concession tickets elsewhere, but this column has a cynical streak so could not help wondering if these caps were not as generous as they seemed, particularly as the FSE had found the average away ticket in the Champions League two seasons ago cost €47 (£40), less than the cap for next season.

This made the Business of Football think this would be a textbook case of a ceiling becoming a floor, with many Champions League clubs now able to raise their prices. However, it turns out our cynicism was misplaced on this occasion, for two reasons.

The first is that the 2022-23 average of €47 was dragged down by German clubs typically charging €20 less than their cross-border rivals, with many examples of wealthy clubs elsewhere — we are looking at you, Real Madrid and Barcelona — routinely charging more than €83 (£70) in recent seasons.

The second is that the majority of clubs did not want to introduce these caps at all and only went along with them because UEFA insisted.

This became apparent when the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday that Tottenham Hotspur were among “at least three clubs that raised informal opposition” to the idea in that Club Competitions Committee meeting.

The story initially said the Premier League club voted against the idea but later changed it to say there was no vote. In truth, there never are — they just keep talking until everyone has agreed “unanimously” or the idea gets binned.

But the main thrust of the story was bang on: Tottenham did not like the idea and said so. But so did half of the other clubs.

This column has contacted more than half a dozen people in the room, none of whom wanted to speak on the record to protect relationships. They all had slightly different recollections of the “debate” but said Tottenham were far from alone in objecting to the idea. Some wanted UEFA to focus on making the away-day experience less of an ordeal than it can be, while others just did not like being told how much they could charge away fans. They all agreed to nod it through in the end, though.

But the grumbling continued to the ECA’s two-day board meeting in Dublin this week, where many of the same clubs said they did not agree with the caps either but went along with it because they realised now was not the right time to be telling your most loyal customers they should be paying more to watch more football.

Rest players… if it doesn’t damage competitions

If only they could take the same common-sense approach to how they treat the stars of the show, hey? That was certainly the gist of the latest Player Workload Monitoring Report from FIFPro, the global players’ union, which was released on Thursday.

The headlines, as in previous years, were that the top players on the best teams are playing too many games and that is causing fatigue, injuries and stress.

To highlight these concerns, the report picked out the examples of three players who starred for Manchester City last season: Julian Alvarez, Phil Foden and Rodri.

Alvarez made more appearances and was included in more matchday squads than any other professional in men’s football last season, a remarkable 75 appearances and 83 squad inclusions. Foden was tied for second, with 72 appearances and 77 squad inclusions.

This season, if he follows the same usage pattern for club and country, Foden could play in 77 games, as Manchester City have qualified for FIFA’s new and improved Club World Cup next summer. The following season, he could play 83 times.

FIFPro also highlighted Rodri’s schedule last season, as he only had 16 days in 12 months when he was not either playing a game, travelling to or from one, recovering from his exertions, or training. Those 16 days, spread over two chunks, were the only days when he was not in one team setting or another.


Alvarez made 75 appearances last season while at City (Gaspafotos/MB Media/Getty Images)

Their team-mate Bernardo Silva also features in the report, but only as an example of a player who has spoken out about burnout.

“It’s too much — today was too much,” he said after Manchester City beat Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final in April, less than 72 hours after losing to Real Madrid in the Champions League.

Silva made similar comments to Portuguese sports newspaper Record this week, saying: “The schedule is completely crazy. We’ve just received the news that we will only have one day off for the English League Cup game. We’ll probably play every three days for months — it’s been absolutely absurd.”

There is, of course, a solution to this — use your squads, manage their loads — but no competition organiser wants it to happen to them.

During a conference call with journalists this week, FIFPro perhaps inadvertently explained both why clubs should rotate their players and why they do not.

When asked about the union’s legal action against FIFA over what it believes was a lack of consultation on the calendar when the governing body decided to fill every fourth summer with a 32-team Club World Cup, FIFPro’s global policy and strategy director Alexander Bielefeld said: “You don’t necessarily have to take competitions out of the calendar. You can play these competitions with different players.

“We don’t have a shortage of professional footballers in the world. You just have to live with the fact that not every player you want can play in every competition.”

But when asked a similar question, Maheta Molango, the chief executive of the English players’ union, admitted he was worried about “the trend” of managers like Real Madrid’s Carlo Ancelotti resting players when possible “because this could end up harming domestic competitions”.

“Because I, as a fan, pay 100 per cent of my season ticket, but I may end up not seeing 100 per cent of the show,” Molango added.

This column suspects that football’s broadcast and commercial partners feel the same way. By all means, take a break, guys, just don’t do it on my time.

No ticketing Oasis

Speaking of tickets and value for money, the biggest story in the UK last week was the fallout from the sales process mentioned at the top of this piece.

For non-British readers, particularly those under the age of 30, there is a band called Oasis. They are basically two brothers from Manchester who have a love-hate relationship, in that they generally hate each other but love the money their band makes, which is why they have decided to settle their differences and play some concerts again after a 15-year break.

They teased their reformation beautifully over social media, whipping up everyone who remembered their mid-90s pomp (the band’s and their own) into a FOMO frenzy. Millions of fans in the UK and Ireland spent half a day staring at their phones or laptops, frightened to do anything else while they inched forward in the virtual queue.

Once they got to the front, some managed to buy tickets, others were booted out of the queue, accused of being a tout using ticket-buying “bot” software, and others were shocked to discover the advertised £150 tickets now cost £350.

But should they have been shocked? After all, “dynamic pricing” is old hat to airlines, hoteliers and U.S. sports fans. But it was a shock in the UK and the debate about the merits and morality of “surge pricing”, as it is also known, has raged all week.

So, it was hardly surprising that the conversation turned to football. At present, only Celta Vigo and Valencia in Spain are experimenting with it, but the Football Supporters’ Association decided it should make a preemptive strike with a statement on its website.

“With impeccable timing after the Oasis fiasco, voices in football have started to float the idea of infecting football with dynamic pricing,” the English fans’ group said.

“Never underestimate the potential for the most greedy owners in football to try to import terrible ideas from other industries to exploit supporter loyalty. Matchgoers are already mobilising against the recent wave of price rises and attacks on concessions. Any underhand increases will be met with enormous opposition.”

The FSA is almost certainly right about that. Dynamic pricing as an idea has had a worse week than financial fair play.

However, dynamic pricing has been tried in English football before, and it was this column’s old friend Derby County who did it.

Under American ownership at the time, the Championship side teamed up with Indianapolis-based firm Digonex to bring its Sports and Entertainment Analytical Ticketing system, or SEATs, to Pride Park in 2012.

The idea was that the price of tickets would go up or down, within categorised bands of games, based on demand. There were no protests and many in the game were interested to see how Derby County would get on.

It did not catch on, though, and the club quietly dropped it in 2017.

But it was not because fans complained about high prices, on the contrary, it was because they were too low. With Derby County rarely filling their 33,000-capacity stadium, opportunistic shoppers were able to pick up tickets for less than season ticket-holders were paying on a price-per-game basis.

A cautionary tale, then, for any club accountant who spent last weekend wondering why they do not have a crack at surge pricing while waiting to move up 300 places in Ticketmaster’s Oasis queue.

PSG’s Parc des Princes pickle

Of course, dynamic pricing only works to the seller’s benefit if you have more demand than supply, so a football team is always going to need more fans than they can fit in every week.

It is a nice problem to have but can get frustrating if you are an owner who has the money to expand their stadium but cannot get permission to do so. That is the situation Paris Saint-Germain are in.

The serial French champions have played at Parc des Princes since 1974. The stadium is publicly-owned and PSG have a 30-year lease that expires in 2043. Despite not owning the ground, the Qatari-owned club have spent significant sums improving the facilities and would like to expand it from its current capacity of 48,000 to a more appropriate 60,000.

What they would really like to do is buy Parc des Princes and do what they like with it without having to run it past Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo first. Unfortunately, talks between the parties have gone about as well as Hidalgo’s attempts to clean the Seine.


The Parc des Princes is publicly owned (Franco Arland – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)

So, PSG have asked stadium specialists Populous to look for new sites. Four have already been identified and one more might be about to open up.

On September 11, members of the regional council that surrounds the capital will vote on a proposal to create a 50-hectare site on the banks of the Seine, but just outside the City of Paris, that could “make possible sports projects of regional interest, such as the future PSG stadium”.

Relations are so poor between PSG and the mayor that many in Paris believe it is almost inevitable the club will build a new stadium and leave Parc des Princes.

There is another theory, though, and it relates to the recent investment PSG have received from the U.S, first in the shape of private-equity firm Arctos Partners late last year and then, this summer, NBA star Kevin Durant. The four-time Olympic champion and Phoenix Suns star is not just a phenomenal basketball player: he is a canny investor.

It has been suggested to this column that PSG’s real plan is to build a new football stadium on a new site but keep Parc des Princes, too. Why? Well, because Paris still needs somewhere to host multiple nights of Taylor Swift or France’s equivalent of Oasis and the city’s franchise in the European basketball league the NBA is mulling over.

… and their Pernod pickle

Zut alors, we have a second helping of PSG news this week. I am tempted to say it is a digestif, but it is actually an aperitif and now is not the time to annoy its fans.

Last week, French drinks giant Pernod Ricard announced a four-year deal with PSG to become the “worldwide partner” and the club’s “sole Champagne and spirits provider”.

The press release also gushed about “two iconic brands… united in their mission to celebrate victories, sportsmanship and human connections”. And there was me thinking Pernod Ricard just made aniseed-flavoured booze.

The problem for Pernod Ricard and PSG is that I am not the only one to make that mistake and this deal collapsed within three days because that aniseed-flavoured booze, pastis, is synonymous with Marseille, the southern city that is home to PSG’s greatest rival, Olympique Marseille.

The backlash was immediate. To fans of OM, this was like Guinness sponsoring Rangers, or Newcastle Brown Ale appearing on Sunderland’s shirt, and they let the drinks company know.

“For over 90 years, Ricard’s history has been inextricably linked with Marseille, where it was born,” said CEO Alexandre Ricard in a statement announcing the reverse ferret. “Those roots are strong and they run deep, so the decision I’m taking today comes from the heart.”

PSG have not commented but are believed to be slightly surprised at the flap this has caused, particularly as they have had a partnership with Pernod Ricard for a decade and the company also owns Absolut vodka, Jameson whiskey and Havana Club rum.

MK Dons make move for Hart

Milton Keynes Dons are another brand that provoke strong feelings, particularly in south London where the club used to be based. You may have heard of them, they went from non-League football to the top flight, were founding members of the Premier League, and won the FA Cup in 1988.

Of course, they were called Wimbledon FC back then, hence the anger, and they remain the only English professional team to move towns in this way. They did it 20 years ago and the wounds are still raw, despite fans of the original club forming a new team, AFC Wimbledon, who have repeated the climb from non-League to the EFL and will be playing MK Dons, as they are better known, in League Two again this season.

Their clashes are not as well-attended as PSG-OM games, which is probably a good thing.

MK Dons, however, are desperately trying to move on from their still-controversial relocation and last month were bought by a Kuwaiti consortium, which has been saying all the right things about building from the ground up.

With that in mind, the new owners have made their first significant hire, buying out Bolton CEO Neil Hart’s contract and giving him the keys to the rebuild.

The former Burnley chief executive has been in charge at Bolton since 2021 and was named League One’s CEO of the year at the 2023 Football Business Awards.

Stealing another community’s football team was a dreadful idea and should never be repeated, but hiring Hart is a good move.

(Top photo: Luka Modric and Nacho Fernandez of Real Madrid celebrate with the Champions League trophy in June; by Angel Martinez/Getty Images)

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