Slip sliding away: football season-ticket holders fear falling down pecking order

It is a symbol of the connection between the fanbase and club, but there is a growing fear executives would prefer stadiums full of one-off tourists

The document known as “the oldest football season ticket in the world” promises its bearer access to every Burnley home game of the 1884-85 season. It is a ticket that predates the Football League by four years, with all the fixtures played against east Lancashire neighbours. All the same, the legend on the ticket carries a stern warning: “This card is not transferable. Any member violating this rule will be at once expelled from the club.”

For Burnley 1884 read Manchester United 2026. While the oldest remaining season ticket is preserved safely at Turf Moor, at Old Trafford 685 season tickets were voided this summer after a club investigation found evidence of their having been resold on the secondary market. United said such practices “undermine fair access to tickets for genuine supporters and have no place at Manchester United”. United fan groups again protested against the actions of the club’s ownership, claiming: “The way you treat us is a disgrace.”

Nearly 150 years after fans started paying up front to watch their team, the season ticket remains a key component in the success of English football. It is also an enduring source of conflict between supporters and clubs, with tensions seemingly reaching new heights.

Arsenal, like United, have continued to act against the perceived misuse of tickets, suspending nearly 74,000 club accounts since they began a crackdown in 2024. This summer Chelsea became the latest club to insist on minimum levels of attendance to retain your ticket for the following season. Bournemouth moved 600 season-ticket holders to accommodate new hospitality seats and 14 out of the 20 top-flight sides raised their season-ticket prices.

Season-ticket holders have long felt undervalued. But there is a growing sense, especially among fans of the biggest clubs, that they are falling ever further down the pecking order as economic imperatives change. It is a feeling that intensified after a World Cup that seemed precision-tooled to extract as much money as possible from the most devoted fans. One Liverpool supporter crystallised common fears when he appeared on The Overlap at the start of the season arguing that a big club would soon try to get rid of season tickets altogether. The clip went viral.

The Football Supporters’ Association argues that clubs’ present behaviour shows an antagonism towards season-ticket holders. “There’s a sense from supporter groups at the most successful teams that their club executives and owners don’t fully appreciate season ticket holders and would rather have stadiums full of one-off visitors,” an FSA spokesperson said.

“Those who only measure things by the bottom line see season-ticket holders as a group whose matchday spend is lower than the once-a-year fan who will fill their bag at the club shop and pay a bigger premium for their ticket. It’s a shortsighted vision.”

The claim that clubs want to swap longstanding supporters for one-off tourists is at the heart of many fans’ fears over season tickets and, to a certain extent, it bears out. Dominik Schreyer, a professor of sports economics at the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management in Düsseldorf, says season tickets “come at a cost” for clubs.

“In the Premier League, demand is way higher than seat supply,” Schreyer says. “But season-ticket holders get discounted seats, right? They are also more likely to be no-shows. When they do come they spend less on food, less on merchandise and they come later to the stadium. They also don’t churn, because these tickets are so scarce that n obody in their right mind would give them away. Every year the average age grows by one because there is no one new getting tickets. So for the clubs, there are a lot of economic problems from their season-ticket holders.”

That, however, is only one side of the ledger. “What we should not forget is that, in the end, season‑ticket holders are part of a product that, in the case of the Premier League, is marketed to a global audience,” Schreyer says. “They are creating an atmosphere. Season-ticket holders are also used to all the rules and the rituals and the songs, the moments that make this experience very special. So tourists want to come because they want to experience it. If you were to get rid of all the season-ticket holders, you would have all the operational and coordination costs of doing it and the product would not be the same any more.”

There are other reasons why season tickets work for clubs, not least because they generate a largely predictable amount of revenue that turns up at the same time each year (at the very end of the season where it can be usefully deployed to help with transfer spending limits). For most clubs, it would not be feasible to replace season‑ticket holders with one-off fans even if they wanted to. But with the average number of season tickets at any given Premier League fixture running at 75% of all tickets, is there a case that this number should not be set in stone? Could access to matches be broadened without killing off a part of what made them great?

“In theory, you could give all the seats to season-ticket holders and still have a lot of tickets for new fans if you manage it effectively,” Schreyer says. “You just need to change the mechanism in order to get the ticket that is unused on to the secondary market.”

This is what is happening at a number of clubs, with fans being asked to return their tickets for resale if they are not being used. But these requests have often come with warnings that tickets could be removed should fans not comply. Ultimately sSome of the tension around season tickets is simply because clubs are not talking clearly or frequently enough with fans. “Clubs don’t communicate that well,” Schreyer says. “I don’t understand why they don’t get fans on board better. You can make things so transparent.”

It is instructive looking across the Premier League at the season‑ticket policies of each club, the way they were announced and the response they received from supporters. Brentford raised prices for the first time in five years, but faced minimal pushback. Brighton’s 3% rise was backed by the fan advisory board. Chelsea and Tottenham froze prices but still found themselves at odds with their fanbase.

The season ticket is a device as old as the game itself but has grown to become a symbol of the connection between fanbases and clubs. Disputes over the importance of season tickets may prove to be a harbinger of their demise, but may equally be better understood as a sign of the dysfunction at the top of our biggest clubs.