Study: The biggest winners and losers when it comes to ticket sales in the Premier League

We all know the average ticket price for a game of football is ridiculous. Many fans just don’t go to the games these days as it can easily be an £80 day just to see your favourite football team. 

But are these ticket price rises over the years affecting the clubs? You’ll still see sellout games in the Premier League but not every team is raking in 50,000+ spectators on a £40 ticket every game, so what’s happening with the empty seats? Well, they’re staying empty, and it’s costing clubs thousands each season. 

We’ve recently looked at the figures for these empty seats and have found that Tottenham Hotspur are missing out on a potential £16,762,446 a season in ticket sales which works out at £441,117 a game. It’s no secret that Spurs is the most expensive club to follow in the Premier League with the crazy ticket prices, this season, on average, a ticket is costing fans £69 a game at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, and with an average of 6,393 empty seats a game, it’s a serious missed opportunity for the club. 

Spurs are actually losing almost double the amount of any other club in the Premier League when it comes to empty seats, the closest to them is Chelsea at Stamford Bridge who are missing out on £8,798,140 a season thanks to an average of 3,562 empty seats a game. 

Of course, these stats do not necessarily mean these clubs are losing money in all areas. In fact, Spurs owners can be quite happy that they’re selling so many tickets at their new stadium as they’re bringing in a whopping £53,776,254 from ticket sales, that’s equivalent to one Anthony Martial! Of course, it’s hard to work out the exact revenue for the clubs, but we’ve added together all the ticket options and divided them by the number of options available and when you consider that these match-goers would most likely be spending a bit of money in the ground, it should average out correctly. It’s been reported that Tottenham Hotspur is the most expensive season ticket in the Premier League with some options going as high as £2,223 for the season.

Elsewhere around Europe, we’ve taken a look at some of the top teams to see how they’re doing. Unfortunately in many European countries, COVID-19 restrictions haven’t been fully lifted in football stadiums which has vastly inflated the financial loss figures. We still thought we’d touch on them as it shows the effect COVID is still having on the football world. 

We have teams like Lazio who are missing out on €1,810,620 per game this season due to the reduced capacity in the Italian league. The club are averaging an astounding 51,732 empty seats per game in the league and with an average ticket price of €35, it’s a shame to see the club missing out on so much funding. It’s a similar situation in the Bundesliga where German giants Bayern Munich are only (I say only like it’s a small amount) making €1,685,835 a game in the league and are losing out on a potential of £1,690,245 a game. We’ve also got to give Bayern Munich huge props for offering €145 season tickets.