After the obscenely high ticket price for our opening Premier fixture its nice to see that some clubs are taking notice of their supporters and offering realistically priced tickets.

Whilst it should be noted that manchester City wont be the only club to charge Saints fans over £50 for the priveledge of watching a game in their stadium, no in that respect they just happened to be the first that we play, its refreshing to see that some big clubs are not too detatched from their fanbase and the current economic situation and are willing to make fooball affordable again.

As mentioned a couple of weeks back in the news stories, Arsenal after consultation with their fanbase have revamped ticket prices at the Emirates, the first fruits of this will be on the opening day of the season when Sunderland visit, being a category C game this means that the travelling fans from the North East will only be charged £25.50 to watch the game, with kids at only £10 and senior citizens £11

Now for the very good news a look at Arsenal's website reveals that we have also been designated as a category C match, meaning that we should be charged exactly the same prices as Sunderland, some cheering news and proof that some teams in the Premier want to ensure that for the lesser games they can attract full houses rather than blocks of empty seats, if this game is to survive then the next generation of supporters has to be encouraged to come and that means making some games affordable to most if not all.    

Photo: Action Images

SingaporeSaint added 11:37 - Jul 26 Sounds very reasonable! And a top notch stadium too.. So is this the same cost as for home fans? I would like to see the practice of ramping up the cost for away fans abolished - would be easy to implement a policy across the league that for any given game - the home end and away end is priced the same. Why I think it is the right thing to do - is due the practice of charging more for away support ultimately means the football is ripping off the most dedicated fans (those who travel). These more dedicated fans are the core support who would influence friends and family to go to home games. In time, some of these will either not be able to afford it at all or go less regularly, and once dedicated fans lose interest, the game will suffer... As for me - I'll almost certainly be in SE Asia, so sadly watching it on TV and will try to influence the Asian fanbase (Chung playing will help).. All 90 mins of every prem league game is on live here.. Although I will travel back and see a few games when poss..

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bstokesaint added 12:19 - Jul 26 Couldn't agree more Singapore. I love travelling to as many away games as possible. It's a costly exercise aside from the tickets, so to make them more affortable would be good. Also it always amazes me how many families travel to away games. You don't want to effectively price-out these kind of supporters. I for one will do everything I can to take advantage of the Emirates ticket prices!

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SaintNick added 12:20 - Jul 26 The away supporters cant be charged more than home fans in the same seats, Arsenal fans charge the same for their own fans in similar seats. A look at man City's ticketing plans though shows a cunning exploitation of the rules, the same seats at the etihad at the other end are about £6 cheaper (ie £45 & £43) than the seats in the away end, however the block of man city supporters next to the away supporters is charged at the same single ticket rate as the away section, it might be virtually all season ticket holders in that section for all we know or they could genuinely sell it all as single tickets for each game and be ripping off their own fans. End result though is that Arsenal have listened to their fans whilst man city whilst undoubtably charging their own fans a lot less via season tickets are still exploiting away supporters

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RipleysCat added 13:49 - Jul 29 The Arsenal-Sunderland game is category C. The City-Southampton game is category A. The reason why it's classed as a category A simply because this is City's first home game after winning the league last season. The reason why the seats are cheaper at the opposite end has already been explained in your other article. The opposite end is The Family Stand, hence the minimum an adult can buy in this stand is two tickets (one for himself and the other for a minor). There is no cunning exploitation of the rules. There are approx 37,000 season tickets at City, so the vast majority of the stadium will be occupied by season ticket holders - taking away fans and corporate seats into consideration, there will only be around 6,500 match-day tickets available to home supporters. Those tickets are spread throughout the stadium. So there are match-day tickets available to home fans in the same stand where away fans are located, and as you point out, these tickets cost the same for both home and away supporters. Those are the comparable seats to the away fans, not the seats at the opposite end, the reason why explained above. Southampton will probably be classed as Category C more often than not for away games, so on average you'll pay less to go to away games than the likes of City, Arsenal, Chelsea, and United fans will be. Still, £50 for a match-day ticket, irrespective of the club charging it, and irrespective of the opposition, is a price that I do agree is too much.

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