Premiership v Bundesliga:

Who Wins in the Battle of Football Tickets and Shirts

In these tough economic times, where footballers and the authorities seem to be even more out of touch with your ordinary football fan than ever before, it raises the question just how far die-hard fans are having to go to carry on supporting their teams to pay for their idols. Over the years the Premiership has grown into one of the richest and most attractive leagues in the world, or the “Best League in the World” if you believe the marketing men, but this has also meant an influx of foreign owners of differing reputes, vast debts, and massive wages, which has in turn led to the spiralling prices of football tickets and a subsequent gentrification of the supporter base at certain clubs, leading to dissent amongst the traditional working-class football fan.

Does the Premiership actually offer a good deal to regular match goers compared to its exciting European rival, the Bundesliga? This is a league comparable to the Premiership in terms of modern, full stadia and exciting attacking play and it is attracting more top talent than ever before from around the world, like the Premiership has been doing, but it is now frequently claimed to be a more fan friendly league on the pocket. Is this true? I have conducted a study of the cheapest adult season tickets for a seat (as we are in hard times, after all) and the price of football shirts at every Premiership and Bundesliga club to find out if we can draw a conclusive answer.

In the Premiership, the average price for a season ticket in 2010/11 is £454.15, compared to the Bundesliga, which is €309.60 (roughly £270.91 at the time of writing). On first glance, one would think that the Bundesliga is a clear winner, but it is more complicated than that, as a Premiership season ticket gives you 19 home league games (as there are 20 teams in the league) compared to just 17 home league games in the 18-team Bundesliga. This means that we can only really make it a fair comparison by working out the cost-per-game of season tickets in the two leagues. After crunching the figures on the calculator, it transpires that the cost-per-game of the cheapest adult season tickets at all Premiership clubs averages out at £23.90, compared to just €18.21 (roughly £15.93), which is a difference of £8 in the favour of our friends from Germany. Germany 1 England 0.

Now, you’ve shelled out for your season ticket and your bank balance is feeling significantly less healthy, more so if you support a Premiership side. What if your average Joe or Fritz wants to further demonstrate his passion to his club by purchasing an official club shirt? In England, a visit to the official club shop for a short sleeve adult size shirt would set Joe back an average of £41, whereas Fritz would have to fork out a whopping €65.73 (£57.52) and definitely gets the wurst deal, pardon the pun. Germany 1 England 1.

After that very unscientific test, it goes to penalties and the Germans win as usual, but a better show than in South Africa from England on this count. Some of the numbers on their own were mind-boggling, such as £893 for the cheapest adult season ticket at Arsenal, or £47 per league game at the Emirates to pay for Bacary Sagna’s trips to the hairdresser. Compare this to Wigan, with the second-cheapest season ticket at £250 (£13.16 a match) and the cheapest club shirt at £31.99, both figures which are lower than some League 2 clubs. There was a strong regional divide, with 4 of the top 5 most expensive clubs being from London (Fulham being the exception) although it was surprising to see Liverpool as the second most expensive club. Only Wigan and Blackburn were cheaper to watch per game than the average Bundesliga team, and Steve McLaren’s Wolfsburg have the cheapest adult season ticket at €198 (£173.26) or €11.65 (£10.19) per match. Germany’s most famous club, Bayern Munich are somewhere in the middle, despite their success and the wealth of the Munich area. Their cheapest adult season ticket is priced at €300 (£262.51) or €17.65 (£15.44) per game to see the reigning Bundesliga and German cup holders and Champions League runners-up from last season.

Although this doesn’t take every single aspect of the match experience into account, it is hard to argue against the Bundesliga being a better value for money league to watch, in terms of season ticket prices, and it will be interesting to see which courses the Bundesliga and Premiership end up taking over the next couple of seasons. You’ll have to keep an eye on the latest Premiership football news to find out! Maybe the Premiership will even start to learn some lessons from its German counterpart, which could be to the benefit of English football fans and their wallets!