Villa turn the heat up on fans over League Cup ticket prices

They are getting cooked in the QTs. I thought it'd be a long while before I saw the word 'boycott' or 'don't go' in relation to anything to do with Aston Villa FC - but ticket pricing for the League Cup third round clash have seemed to set people off.

One thing to get out of the way on the top - I see a lot of talk online about ticket prices, and a lot of people calling that talk 'whining'. That's reductive, and it's bullshit. The complaining is coming - in my eyes - from fans who are spending eye-watering sums on following this football club up-and-down the country; and now across Europe. Not listening to their concerns is akin to not bothering to listen to the warning that we're on a knife edge. They know how much it costs, they feel it the most. They don't need to be told they are whining and moaning by people who do not go to matches - thus do not feel the cost - just like fans who can't go to matches shouldn't be told they aren't important.

A big theme of this year has been 'as good as we are on the pitch, we're awful off it' - and that's a theme given a label by some extremely loyal fans indeed. If they're saying that something stinks, then it probably does.

And the fact that the priciest ticket for a 3rd round League Cup tie is £38.50 - going down to £30.50 - has kicked up quite the stink.

How does it match up? In three years, Villa's league cup ticket average cost has ballooned nearly £10 a-piece for the average adult ticket - and that is using the semi-final against Leicester City as a benchmark. For that legendary tie, fans were charged between £20 and £25 if they had a season ticket (yes, the club offered a discount), and from £25 to £30 if they didn't own one.

For a third-round tie, you'll be paying a fair bit more than for a semi-final that occurred just a few years ago. If Villa charge that for the first game in the cup, how much will they want for the semi-final?

I don't think tickets should be free (despite that being the case entirely for season tickets RE: the first home cup game of the season in the past), nor should they crash in price. I just think the pricing structure is out of balance and hitting fans harder in the pocket than it needs to.

Many seem to think that the club are playing off current support vs an assumed rich 30,000 people on the waiting list. It's a common supply vs demand argument, and one we might see play out in real-time if people do not attend the Everton fixture. I do not think that playing the waiting list off current fans argument is the case at all, but it is telling that some leap to that conclusion based on the clubs actions, and Occam's Razor does apply very well to it.

There are plenty of other spin-offs from this conversation. Why do some think the club's budget is akin to a household budget? Why is there a desire to adopt a social approach (IE, we pay into the club to support our club/community) to ticketing by some who think socialism is a dirty word? Why do we take it as read that tickets pay for transfers (they do not) and why do we assume ticket price rises are a magic bullet for FFP?

And mainly, why do fans name ticket costs as key to running a sustainable club when the club has not acted sustainably at all?

I have seen the following graph about - and it gives anyone who agrees with these ticket prices easy ammunition, but it lacks context. Villa can't just twist a dial on prices (like they are seemingly doing) and improve if they don't have a bigger stadium. Bizarrely, Villa have regularly charged higher prices than both Brighton and Leeds - but Leeds and Brighton smash us on match day revenue, or at least did in 2021/22.

But that's not all. Villa Park fits in more bodies than Stamford Bridge, but Chelsea blow Villa away on matchday revenue. To the 'rising prices are good' crowd, Villa would only be able to match them if they quadrupled their matchday revenue - and then some.

If Villa want to get where they want to be, they'd need to charge about £100 a ticket as of yesterday.  That's impossible, and dicking about in the margins isn't going to help Villa, it's just going to fuck with fans who make up that £16m. Chelsea charge upwards of £70 a ticket for a single game - and simply matching that doesn't make Villa match Chelsea at all when it comes to the big picture. If Villa said 'fuck it' and charged £71 a ticket for every league match, they'd still be behind Manchester City - but Leeds and Brighton prove that ticket pricing isn't a magic bullet. Chelsea certainly prove that there are incredible amounts of money to be made in limited confines. It's not just about pumping the core for more and more.

The real solutions include stadium expansion, and renewed commitments to exponentially improving hospitality and commercial revenue on matchdays. The real solutions are in those long term commitments to building a sustainable future - not asking for more money because you feel you can. 20% squeezes on the support that is already apparently sustaining the club as is, isn't going to work in the long-term if the cost-of-living crisis doesn't do one. Right now, it seems that Villa are playing with what they have and in a game where they have to be patient, they have supercharged that fan squeeze. The only way they can catch up within their current structure is to blow the wallet of every matchgoing Villa fan to pieces.

My case against Villa not rising ticket prices is a simple one. If they cut out some incredibly simple mistakes, they'd make more money than they dreamed possible without wasting matchday revenue.

If Villa gain about £20m a season from season ticket revenue, and spend approximately £15m on Morgan Sanson, approx. £15m on hiring & firing Steven Gerrard's and approx. £15m on getting in Coutinho for 2o-ish matches, why is it acceptable for the club to completely avoid criticism on the finances for those deals if - as argued by some - it wipes a source of revenue from the club off the books for years? In terms of the graph above, that'd mean three deals that didn't end up working have eclipsed both season ticket and matchday revenue for an entire season. Hindsight and back-of-envelope maths here help enormously, but Villa could've probably sent everyone to games for free for a season if they didn't opt for Sanson, Coutinho and Gerrard.

I mean, when you think of it like that, it's a bit shoddy isn't it?

Things like the Terrace View and the BK8 sponsorship are controversial issues - but they should, in effect, help cool prices elsewhere. The fact that its all going up, and in quite a dramatic fashion, is hurting. Especially when you then consider that Villa are in for a windfall of cash just for existing in European competition. The prize money and TV money adds up, and it hasn't eased the pressure on fans at all.

I believe gate revenue is crucial for all clubs, and is a key part of Villa's finances - but it's arguably the one that you can fiddle with the least. Twisting the dial burns fans, and the argument is that it is being twisted in a season where Villa are finding more than a few ways to print money. They get money for existing, they get money for playing in the Conference League, they get money from the new hospitality experience in the Terrace View, and they also get it from their sponsors and selling players. That argument about twisting the dial further? It's the argument that 'does this really need to happen?'

And my simple answer to that, is no. The gate revenue from any singular match is marginal for Villa. It'd essentially buy Keinan Davis back. I do not believe that Villa need to do this at all, but then again - I do not have the finances in front of me. Then again, if twisting the dial for a match against Everton in the League Cup is truly a difference-maker for Villa's books, then we are absolutely fucked.

As for that boycott - the North Stand Syndicate of fans has asked that you simply donate to the Aston-Nechells foodbank. While I'm neither here nor there on a boycott, I know I can't afford to go, and would rather chuck a few quid towards the foodbank. You can donate here, and it'll probably do an organisation a fair bit more good than whatever Villa plan to spend their Everton 'fortune' on.

Mind, I feel the word 'barbaric' used below is a fair bit strong - but the sentiment of not going and giving your cash to people who actually need it is one I can get down with.

Let me leave you with this. If Brighton can offer an all-in £75 package for three Europa League games, why do Villa think it's more acceptable for them to charge more than that for two tickets to see Everton in the first League Cup round that they can enter? Is it to see how far they can push the current crop of match-going fans?

You've never been more of a customer than you are now. For some, that is fine - and the way of things. But please don't belittle people who are fighting to stay in tune and in touch with the club that they love. The club that is their entire life.