By Jake Verity

Usually I’d start a season with a big tub-thumping bucket of optimism, talking about how high my hopes are and how far I think we can go. And don’t worry, there’s plenty of that to come.

I mean what a start against both Peterborough and Rochdale. In my view, we look every inch a better side than we did last season. And for what it’s worth, I’m happy to put down on paper that I think we have a very good chance indeed in challenging virtually any team in League One.

If we can get these final few pieces of recruitment right, use the loan market well and rise to the challenge of three tricky fixtures over the next fortnight, there is zero reason we can’t try to push for a place in the Championship and a good third-round cup-tie to match.

But, this piece isn’t about that.

And I’ll be honest, when I originally wrote this piece, and agreed it’d be scheduled for today, I thought it was going to be the perfect time. Yet little did I know, the club would make this an even more pertinent moment for a conversation about this topic.

Yes, I’m talking about the cost of football. Something that we’ve usually got totally spot on in Bradford, and have done for a long time. And I hope we don’t stop.

But with Wednesday away tomorrow, I think there’s a place for a much more direct and uncomfortable piece about the cost of football at this level. And I’ll admit, it’s a piece I didn’t really know if I wanted to write. But, I’ve persevered as I think it’s worth a conversation.

Context is important

The first half of last season is one of my favourites in recent memory. The trips to the likes of Newcastle and Cardiff. The derby day victory over Huddersfield at home. That blistering start where it felt like we were simply scoring goal after goal and sweeping teams aside.

I wasn’t thinking about anything other than enjoying every minute of football. Many of us, I’m sure, felt the same. Just happy to be there. To finally be going to those bigger away days and grounds, to have a chance at competing with clubs we’ve been distant from for years. It felt good. Really good.

And that feeling very much does extend to this season. But there’s stormclouds in the distance looming down the line, and I’m really hoping they can sit as far away from us as possible.

But the first signs of drizzle have found their way through in recent weeks, and spurred on this article, in truth. It’s not really down to City, either. It’s just a symptom of where we find ourselves.

Before a ball was even kicked in a league game, we were met by three pieces of irritating news.

Firstly, that our away game at Sheffield Wednesday, a first league encounter in over twenty years, would be moved to a Thursday night. I don’t have to spell out why this is bad. It’s an absolute joke for both sets of supporters who would have loved a Saturday out in the Sheffield sun.

The second piece of news really rubbed the salt in, though. The fact we’d be paying £34 a ticket for the privilege of going. I mean come on. Seriously?

And finally, for anyone going to Plymouth, you’ve got to fork out £30 on top of all those miles of petrol and train tickets you’ll need to get there. Reyt do!

If you pop all that on top of our season tickets, all the pints, shirts and usual spends that come with it, it’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?

Now look. There’s of course an argument that if you don’t want to spend money, don’t do these things. Fine. Give away games a miss. You could watch the Wednesday game on Sky. Stick the radio on for Plymouth. But is that fun? Is that what being a fan is all about?

I don’t seriously think anyone believes deep down that the triple whammy we’ve been hit with is good in the long-term for the game? When you’re paying £4 more to watch us play away at Hillsborough than a Leeds fan is to go to Old Trafford as a result of the Premier League’s away ticket cap, we have to say what is pretty blindingly obvious. Something is up.

Football is getting expensive.

In defence of City

Now, look.

There’s an obvious place to start here and that’s on the Burnley ticket situation and give the club a huge well done. When I first wrote this piece, it obviously wasn’t a thing, so it wasn’t something I led on. But I did open up this section by crediting the ticket deals we’ve offered since our promotion season.

I think it’s totally reasonable to suggest that they could well have been the difference in helping us get over the line a couple of years ago. As Sam Walker left the club this week, many people were quick to mention how his big save against Colchester was the difference in a game that ultimately propelled us onto promotion.

But don’t forget, the club did a £5 ticket deal that day. We got a record fourth-tier crowd of 23,381 and swept Colchester convincingly to one side. It was the start of something special, for sure. And since then, we’ve been on a great trajectory.

Beyond the obvious on-pitch spending we’ve done this Summer, we’ve given Valley Parade another makeover with the seats relaid in the Midland Road now. The stadium is finally starting to look every inch up to the potential we know it has, and that won’t have come cheaply.

And of course, our season ticket offering is still pretty good. It works out not much over £15 a game, which for League One football is very solid. Don’t forget, of course, it could well have been a second division deal. That would have represented frankly ridiculous value for the likes of West Ham to play their trade down at Valley Parade.

But, by the same token, I do think there’s a few things which we should just pause for thought on. This is by no means criticism, either. It’s just a fair assessment as to how things have changed for us.

Because although our season tickets do work out at broadly reasonable value, they do also represent a fairly sharp increase of £100 in just under two seasons. Yes, that has been met with promotion from League Two and a fourth-placed League One finish, but that doesn’t make it any less of a shock to the system. That’s a 40% increase.

Matchday tickets have popped above the £25 mark for the first time now at £26 a game, or £29 on the day, which is feeling a tad more on the steep end of things. It certainly makes it a harder sell to bring along a mate, or a more casual fan, that’s for sure.

Of course, it is totally fair enough to say the above comes with the territory we now find ourselves in, hence the title of this piece. But it doesn’t make any of this less of a shock to the system when considering those away tickets I mentioned earlier on top.

We recently saw the appearance of an £80 hoodie in our club shop online, which came in for a reasonable amount of questioning. The club’s position appears to be that they are looking to have several different products at different price points, so people have a choice. Which is, by the way, totally fair and reasonable. But again, it does feel a tad steep.

A good way of putting things into context is that for a parent and U17 both buying their season ticket as well as an adult and junior shirt this season, it comes to £628. Of course, everyone has different financial outlooks, but that’s certainly an increase when considering the same two seasons ago was £508.

Again, there’s not necessarily any blame here. Is this just the cost of success?

Getting it right

Again, £5 tickets for the Burnley cup game is an incredibly good decision that deserves to be welcomed. I am chuffed to see the club trying to capitalise on what’s effectively to some people a borderline derby day given the proximity of the two clubs.

For context, Doncaster are charging £15 for their tie against Middlesbrough, and Sheffield Wednesday £15 for their game against Wolves. So we are ahead of similar competition of what seems to be broadly affordable football all around, in the cup at least.

And we have always tried to lead in this space.

Like many of my generation, I ended up getting my first season ticket during the 2007/08 season, after the deal the club offered that made us the cheapest club in the country at £138 for an adult. We’ve always had a proud tradition of trying to make football affordable where we can.

It is important to reflect on the fact Bradford is a proudly working-class city. That deal almost certainly not only revitalised our club when on the brink, but paved the way for many new fans and families to start going to games. The atmosphere in those home and away ends last season was almost definitely built off the back of the many families who went all those years ago.

The club had been through a rough time before that 2007/08 season, and it’s important to reflect on how far we’ve come.

If you look back at how our attendances have grown, it is quite remarkable really. We went from a season average of 8,694 fans in 06/07 (44% of the crowd against Peterborough on Saturday, for context), up to 13,694 in the subsequent 07/08 season.

By 2011/12 when Phil Parkinson came into the club, average crowds had dropped down to 10,171, but a few years later his renaissance was complete. The 2015/16 season became a flagship moment for us, with a £149 deal leading us to an incredible average attendance of 18,090. We also topped League One attendance charts the campaign after with just short of 19,787, even in the wake of his departure.

By the time we’d been relegated back to League Two in 2019/20, we held an average attendance of 14,253, and after years of growing that much higher post-covid, we broke an average attendance of over 20,000 for the first time last season.

Long may that continue, and it seems like conclusive proof we are getting things right and growing the club in a very sustainable way. There has been conversation before this season about ticket exchange services, and as we inch closer to hitting Valley Parade’s capacity more regularly, there’s a fair conversation to be had about what comes next.

Getting it wrong

But as I’ve talked for a bit about ourselves, I wanted to draw on some comparisons with clubs around the country, which highlight we’re probably fine for now in just managing the cost of football. And it is a tough tightrope to balance on when thinking about the clubs we’re competing against.

Leicester City, for example, will be charging some fans £47 for their game against Burton Albion this weekend. This is a club who have reportedly made around £45m in transfer fees this Summer (with one player leaving for £20m, a League One record!). Let that sink in.

In many ways, as deeply sickening as that is in my view, it’s equally hilarious that they have a season-opening home derby against Burton Albion at those prices just years after playing Champions League football, winning the FA Cup and the Prem. Proof football has gone totally bonkers.

Wednesday having the cheek to charge us £34 a ticket knowing we’ll easily sell out our first trip to Hillsborough in 20-odd years sure left a sour taste, but knowing we’re a genuine competitor against them and on the right side of being reasonable with our pricing, shows we are doing a decent job.

And an underrated success is that gone are the days of looking at newly promoted National League sides. We’re now up against the big boys once again.

But also, I will make a quick point here though that AFC Wimbledon are charging £40 for some matchday tickets this season, and their ‘Legends Lounge’ for the game against Reading this weekend would set you back £189 for the game. I mean, seriously?

I don’t think any of us really follow City for the corporate greed and commercialisation that’s seeping through the Premier League, to an increasing extent the Championship, and by extension League One.

We follow us because City are our club. The banner we hold up before games is right when it says ‘This is Our House’.

All of us are etched into the wool and fabric of this part of the world, and while of course the goal is to climb back to the Championship and who knows what from there, we just need to be mindful that we don’t end up betting our balance sheet too heavily on those who keep the turnstiles tipping round.

Food for thought?

As we’ve got the Burnley pricing spot on, I wanted to also make a few sensible suggestions here as to how we might further entrench ourselves as a club that’s consistently delivering for our fans. The club has gotten quite good at listening to us over the past couple of seasons, so it would be great to see if these points could be put to them.

1. Loyalty Points

It is no secret that some of our fans spend hundreds, if not thousands, each year trekking across the country. One meaningful change the club could make would be greater transparency about how ticket allocations work for the loyalty points.

There are excellent systems adopted across football where fans know exactly where they stand in the pecking order, yet these Bantams are left with a slightly more opaque process about how the system works.

Some clarity about how bandings are calculated, a leaderboard of where fans are placed, or explanation of the current system allocating X amount of tickets are allocated to those with enough points, Y to season ticket holders, and Z to everybody else would be a good start.

Of course, the introduction of our loyalty points system meant that there’s some fans who have missed out on this system, or newcomers are at a disadvantage, but greater transparency about how everyone can have a chance; and an appreciation of where those with the most points sit might offer crumbs of comfort for people who’ve spent every last penny travelling to Plymouth or Peterborough.

And also, this wouldn’t hurt the fact that the club has commercialised products such as memberships to give extra loyalty points (whether that’s right, or wrong). It’s more just about fans knowing roughly where they stand. And who knows, it might tip some to do a few more away games too as an extra incentive?

2. Mutual Agreements with other Clubs

While I understand the temptation to whack reciprocal pricing for those clubs who are charging us crazy pricing, the ultimate loser on that will be our counterparts at other clubs, sadly.

I actually think it’s a really good thing we’re charging Burnley fans the same as our own, and we’ve done this in the past before for these kinds of promotional deals.

What would be a much more positive action would be us trying to come out as a leader in League One and broker some kind of deal with other clubs on mutually beneficial pricing.

Could you imagine not only the PR the club would get from writing to other clubs saying, we’re going to charge away fans £26 a pop if they buy in advance, but only if you do the same for ours? It’ll also really show up those clubs who are taking the proverbial, and gives us a chance to name and shame the worst offenders as fans.

Of course, the biggest benefit here is the fact it helps our own fans. Just think, for a City fan who does 7 or 8 away games a season, a four quid saving basically gets them a free ticket back.

3. Let’s have a proper conversation about the cost of football at another fan’s forum

BBC Sport and Jamie Raynor in particular do an excellent job of covering these events, ensuring they ask fair questions to the club and that fans’ voices are heard.

But often there’s so much to squeeze into the interviews they do, this never quite has had the chance to be its own standalone topic (though a few of these themes did come up in a recent interview he did, as I was already mulling over this piece).

A big part of being a fan of a football club is trying to understand how it’s operating, which is why I think it’d be good to talk through some of the things like loyalty points and ticket pricing more broadly and understand some of the decision-making behind it in greater detail, alongside a wider piece on the economics of football.

If you dig back into the WOAP archives, Jason wrote this piece back in 2014 about the economics of Bradford City. I’d love to know how this all stacks up in a modern context.

Wednesday on a Thursday

There’s a simple fact why Sheffield Wednesday can get away with charging us £34 tickets on a Thursday night.

It’s the fact that nights like these were in short supply until Graham Alexander walked into Valley Parade as our manager. What he’s done is make sure his team covers the hard yards on the pitch, so our fans feel nothing but compelled to do the same off it.

If you want to ask whether this game is worth it, the fact our first encounter at Hillsborough since February 2005 sold out in no time at all, tells you plenty… it’s tolerable for now, I guess!

The real question you have to ask yourself though after reading all of this, is what will the price of tickets be the next time we’re there.

And if all goes well, what division will the game be played in? If only I had the answer to that.

I do, however, have one thing that I’m pretty confident I can tell you.

There’s one thing that feels guaranteed to be good value:

This Bradford City team.

Categories: Opinion

Tags: BCAFC