Which Premier League Club is the Most Expensive to Support?

As the new Premier League season starts, fans of clubs up and down the country and around the globe, are gearing up to watch their favourite teams compete in the biggest footballing league in the world.

The Premier League is big business. It was reported that clubs will make almost 6.4 billion in revenue this season. It is not just the clubs that rely on this cash-generating behemoth for revenue, as the size of the Premier League helps support local hospitality businesses, clothing giants, broadcasters, online casinos, and bookmakers, to name but a few.

In the 21st century, matchday revenue is a comparatively small chunk of the cash generated by Premier League clubs, but it is still a massive money-making venture, and clubs know that thousands of fans are desperate to see their favourite players perform in person.

As a result, the cost of attending matches and purchasing merchandise and refreshments at games can be quite an expense. But which clubs are the most affordable, and which are the most expensive? By delving deep into the data around the costs of supporting each PL team, we can reveal the answer and which clubs have given the most back to fans who have purchased season tickets in recent years.

The most affordable teams to be a fan of

1. Everton
Football affordability score of 7.64/10

Everton are the most affordable Premier League football club to support overall. The Merseyside club are entering what could be their final season at Goodison Park, their home for 131 years, as a new stadium is nearing completion.

Currently, the average one-match resale ticket price is the lowest in the division at £120. It is also one of the cheaper grounds for a beer and a pie, as it ranks in the top five most affordable for each of these categories.

2. Wolves
Football affordability score of 7.45/10

Wolverhampton Wanderers (more commonly known as Wolves) are the second most affordable Premier League team to be a fan of. Since they were last promoted in 2018, they have established themselves as solid performers, helped along by a large swathe of talented players imported from Portugal, with the likes of Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho, and Pedro Neto lighting up Molineux.

Although Wolves do not rank as the most affordable in any one category, they perform strongly across every category to achieve a high overall score. The price of a pie is the fourth lowest in the league, at just £4.

3. Wolves
Football affordability score of 7.15/10

It is one of the Premier League’s new teams for the new season that ranks third. It has been a long wait for Ipswich fans to return to the big time as they were last in the Premier League in the 2001/02 season and were in the third tier as recently as two years ago.

Under head coach Kieran McKenna, the Tractor Boys have achieved back-to-back promotions, and unsurprisingly, demand to see them is off the charts. Evidence of this comes in the high resale value of tickets. They are so rare that the average price of one match ticket (£376) is more than the cheapest season ticket (£372).

The most expensive teams to be a fan of

1. Arsenal
Football affordability score of 1.6/10

At the other end of the affordability spectrum is Arsenal. The Gunners are one of the country’s biggest and most successful teams, but unfortunately, for their fans, they are the most expensive team to support.

The cheapest season ticket at the Emirates Stadium costs over a thousand pounds (£1,073, to be exact), and the average one-match ticket on resale is £249. If you want to drink away your financial worries during the match, you will also be disappointed, as a beer at the stadium costs £6.35.

2. Chelsea
Football affordability score of 2.25/10

Chelsea is the second most expensive football club to be a fan of in the Premier League. The West London club has been one of the most successful in the Premier League era, but it has struggled for form in recent seasons following a takeover and a revolving door of underperforming players and managers.

Unfortunately, for fans of The Blues, this underwhelming football experience comes at a high price, as the cheapest season ticket at Stamford Bridge is £810. Luckily, pie eating at football is more associated with northern clubs, as buying one at Chelsea costs £5.30. In fact, if you ate one pie at every home game, you would spend over £100 in a season.

3. Tottenham
Football affordability score of 3.37/10

Tottenham makes it a hat trick of London clubs at the top of the most expensive rankings, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the capital city’s general expensiveness compared to the rest of the country.

Spurs have the most expensive replica kit, it costs £148 for the home kit for this season. On top of this, they have the second most expensive season tickets after Arsenal, as the cheapest ones will cost you £856.

Teams where you get the biggest return on investment with a season ticket

1. Manchester City
Value for season ticket score of 9.68/10

Manchester City have been the most successful English team during the 2020s by a mile, becoming the first team to win four league titles in a row. During that time, legendary manager Pep Guardiola played a great style of football, while their state-backed ownership allowed them to purchase some of the best players in the world.

The cheapest season ticket at Manchester City is £425, and for that, fans have seen an average of 15 wins at home and 54 goals (the highest in the league for both factors) in the last season. This means it costs City season ticket holders just £28.72 per win and £7.90 per goal scored.

2. Leicester City
Value for season ticket score of 7.58/10

Leicester have just been promoted to the Premier League as champions of the Championship during their one season in the second tier. Less than a decade ago, The Foxes won the Premier League title in extraordinary circumstances as they were 5,000-1 outsiders to achieve such a feat.

Despite not reaching these heights again, Leicester fans have received good value for their season tickets in the past five seasons. Despite dropping down to the Championship, their average league position is still 11th, and they have averaged 35 goals a season, which means it costs season ticket holders £11.68 per goal.

3. Ipswich Town
Value for season ticket score of 7.37/10

Another club where season ticket holders have got a lot for their money in recent seasons is the Ipswich faithful. Despite spending much of the past half-decade in the third tier, large crowds have still flocked to Portman Road to watch their team play.

Averaging 41 home goals scored per season means that it costs Ipswich season ticket holders just £9.07 per goal scored and just £30.49 per win. Despite ranking second in both these categories, Ipswich’s average League position for the past five seasons is 46th (first in League 1), which drops them down the rankings. 

Teams where you get the smallest return on investment with a season ticket

1. Bournemouth
Value for season ticket score of 2.63/10

Bournemouth’s stadium is pitifully small compared to other Premier League teams but it is often full to bursting as the Cherries enjoy some of the most successful times in their history. The South Coast team rose through the divisions in the 2010s as a result of large financial investment, brilliantly spun as a feel-good story and a true footballing fairytale.

Bournemouth’s average league position in the past five years has been 19th, making them a bit of a yo-yo club. A reason for this is perhaps the number of goals conceded at home, 26 on average, made worse when you exclude the two seasons they spent in the Championship.

2. Brighton
Value for season ticket score of 3.37/10

Brighton and Hove Albion are another team that does not reward season ticket holders much for their purchases. Despite having some success in recent seasons, a lot of it has been built on away form, as they have averaged the lowest number of home wins (eight) in the past five years. As a result of this and the cheapest season ticket price of £595, Brighton fans need to pay £92.97 per goal, the most in the league.

2. Everton
Value for season ticket score of 3.37/10

Despite being the most affordable team to be a fan of overall, Everton ranks joint second for the lowest return on investment for season ticket holders. Everton have scored just 23 goals at home on average over the past five seasons, meaning it costs almost £25 a goal for those with the cheapest season tickets at Goodison.

This fact is perhaps unsurprising, as scoring goals were a big problem for Everton last season. Despite creating the 11th most expected goals in the league last year, they actually scored 20 fewer in reality and ranked 19th for goals scored with just 40.

Methodology

• The cheapest adult season ticket prices for each club were sourced from GiveMeSport.
• The average resale ticket price was sourced from SeatPick, the price for all 38 of each club’s matches was recorded, and the mean average price was calculated.
• The price of kits was sourced from each club’s official online store, and we calculated the price of a full adult male kit for the new season.
• The price of a beer and the price of a pie were sourced from Away Games.
• We combined these factors and created an overall affordability score out of 10 for each team.
• For the return on season ticket investment section, we used data from transfermarkt. 
• We recorded each club’s finishing position over the past five seasons and then took an average of these positions.
• We recorded the total number of home wins, home goals scored, and home goals conceded in the past five seasons and took an average.
• The season ticket cost was divided by the average values to find the average price per home win and goal scored.
• We also recorded the number of goals conceded at home, with the lowest value being the best.

Fair use 

Feel free to use the data or visuals on this page for non-commercial purposes. Please be sure to include proper attribution linking back to this page to give credit to the authors.  

For any press questions, please contact riley.clark[at]casino.org