Fulham pick strategic 'least shit' option with 3.5% season ticket increase

Reaction to Friday's season ticket renewal announement

Image Credit: Leighton Rudd

With safety mathematically assured in next season’s Premier League, it’s little surprise that Fulham confirmed season ticket prices for the 26/27 season this week.

The damage? A 3.5% increase on the renewal price of all season tickets. That’s up from the 2.8% rise for 25/26, but down on the 4% increase for 24/25 and way down on the seismic 18% increase for 23/24.

After the widespread anger of that 18% jump, Fulham’s new policy seems to be a much more calculated stealth rise. Pick a percentage point that’s somewhere near (but still above) the rate of inflation, cite ‘rising match day costs’ as the justification and just hope that people shrug their shoulders.

And you know what? It’s working. Ill-feeling last year towards the season ticket announcement was the lowest I remember, and early indications show that the reaction to this year’s rises are mild-irritation at best.

However, the rise comes against the backdrop of price freezes at several Premier League clubs including Crystal Palace, Manchester City, and Tottenham Hotspur (admittedly, Spurs are not a shining example of how to run a football club).

This year, the Fulham Supporters Trust wrote to Fulham asking for a season ticket price freeze. Their reasoning was “to give fans some breathing space after years of cumulative price hikes”.

Sadly, this request has fallen on deaf ears. In fact, most of what Fulham fans request tends to fall on deaf ears these days. Working toilets in the Hammersmith End, a functioning loyalty scheme that actually rewards away attendance and some segregation in the Putney End are all things that the club can’t seem to get their head around, despite all of them being problems for years and years.

So whilst a 3.5% increase doesn’t sound like much, are facilities at Craven Cottage increasing by the same margin each year? Yes, the football on the pitch is mostly good, but we all know that our ticket money is not what’s propping up that side of the business.

I don’t live in a dreamworld, prices are rising everywhere, but it would be lovely wouldn’t it if Fulham, for once, just bucked the trend and looked after their own? Instead, it feels like we are always playing the Rachel Reeves ‘least shit option’ playbook.

Percentages are a great way of making rises seem inconsequential, but with this 3.5% rise, my season ticket in the Hammersmith End (H4) is now £38 per game. Considering that £40 per game still feels like the maximum kind of price point that an individual ticket should cost, it’s quite steep when you’re being asked to commit to a whole season up-front.

A side-note is that I think that it’s very unfair that season ticket holders that signed up in or after 2022/23 are paying a higher renewal rate to those of us who had season tickets before that date.

The club have tried to spin this as “appreciation for their long-standing commitment”, but it’s total bollocks. I reluctantly understand having higher prices for new purchasers, but an arbitrary 2022 cut-off that costs this subset of fans hundreds of pounds per year is cruel and unjust.

FST / FAB Needle

One of the other interesting points about the club announcement was how much the Fan Advisory Board (FAB) were mentioned in the comms. The statement from the chair David Claridge seemed to indicate that the club wanted rises to be higher, as he said that Fulham “adjusted their initial proposal” after consultation with the FAB.

You can tell quite clearly though that the FAB statement was very carefully worded to avoid the landmine of praising price-rises, whilst also not criticising the club. I imagine that email attachment was titled ‘v65 USE THIS ONE FINAL FINAL FINAL.docx’.

The Fulham Supporters Trust were as strong as I’ve ever seen against the Fan Advisory Board stating “we are disappointed by the Club’s hand-picked Fan Advisory Board’s decision to not oppose these increases. It further highlights the glaringly obvious structural limitations of their ability to truly stand up for the interests of all our fans.”

As that closing paragraph clearly indicates, the FST have realised that the Fan Advisory Board are now who the club will speak to on important matters such as ticket prices. I really hope that this can be the dawn of a more-militant supporters trust, one that’s not worried about upsetting the club or protecting relationships. Ultimately, since the FST is democratic we all have the chance to say how we think it should be run.

The price of football is now a widespread issue that touches almost every club in the land and Fulham are no longer outliers in squeezing every penny possible out of fans. This is a problem bigger than just our club and until fans from across England find a way of uniting properly, teams will continue to chase those marginal revenue gains at our expense.