4. Fan Friendly
The average fan is being priced out the Premier League. It is shocking to think that Arsenal who havent won a competition in seven years are asking £985 minimum for a season ticket and almost two thousand for the best seats. No wonder it is becoming increasingly common to see pockets of empty seats at the Emirates Wigan have the cheapest season tickets at £300 minimum and for that you get to watch a team consistently avoid relegation. Is it a surprise they are only attracting an average attendance of 17,000 in a stadium which holds 25,000? An average season ticket to see Dortmund or Bayern Munich will cost less than £300. In a ranking of the football leagues with the highest average attendances the Premier League came second with 34,000. The Bundesliga came first with 45,000 and eight of the top twenty supported clubs in Europe. They also boast some of the most impressive stadiums in the world. The 2006 World Cup helped to fund new state-of-the-art football stadiums with eight of the Bundesliga stadiums being opened since 2000, compared to only four in the Premier League. Bayern Munichs Allianz Arena has become the epitome of the modern football stadium. Nine of the stadiums also exceed a capacity of 50,000 with Dortmunds Signal Iduna Park holding 80 thousand, including their impressive Südtribüne terrace which holds 26,000 the largest in Europe. Fans of Die Schwarzgelben have been breaking records over the past few years. The stadium broke the European fan average attendance in 2012 with almost 1.37 million spectators over the season and they regularly sell over 54,000 season tickets. Even the newly promoted Fortuna Dusseldorf sold an exceptional 31,000 season tickets. There is a limit on the amount of season tickets available meaning some tickets are on gate and 10% of the seats must be for the travelling supporters. Even the travel expenses are covered as the tickets double as free rail passes. Despite these huge attendances and state-of-the-art stadiums the Bundesliga has an average ticket price of £10 to £12 pound. A price-of-the-game study conducted by the BBC in 2011 showed that only eight teams from the 92 league sides offered tickets at £10 for the cheapest available. Dortmund fans boycotted a derby match against Schalke in August 2010 because ticket prices were increased to around £17; almost double the usual. In Germany the fan comes first and perhaps the Premier League should take note. We are not just consumers.