I never know where to begin with these things, so I guess I should tell you a short story of the inspiration for this blog and go from there. Since 2008, me and some of my friends do something called ‘random football’.

Basically, the premise is that we put lower league team names in a hat, draw one and go. Our jaunts have taken us to such places as Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham, Chester and many more places across the UK. The idea being that we get the hell out of Dodge for a couple of days, watch some football, have a night out and have a laugh.

Since I'm now back in Ipswich after taking a bit of a hiatus abroad, I was invited to this month’s edition or random football at Doncaster Rovers, tickets priced at the £20 mark. £20 for League One football?! That's the third tier of English football for anyone not keeping up.

As I’ve been to a few European games, it got me thinking - who could I watch around Europe for £20? So I started looking (it took me much effort and reading four or five different languages, the things I do to make a point!).

So here goes, prices converted to pounds to make it simple. If you like fancy food, mature wine and frogs’ legs, £24 will buy you tickets for Paris St Germain in the Parc de Princes.

Maybe you like Vespas, strong coffee and fiery passions, £18 will see you watching Inter Milan at the San Siro.

Perhaps strong beer, sausages and lederhosen are more your thing? £20 will have you standing at the BayArena for Bayer Leverkusen, or in Dortmund or even Bayern Munich! On a side note for £8 you can watch some 2-Bundesliga action with VFL Bochum.

Maybe you like smokes, pancakes and sexy times, £17 will have you standing at the Phillips Stadion or Afas Stadion, PSV Eindhoven and AZ Alkmaar respectively. It’s £22 for the Kijp (Feyenoord) and Ajax’s Amsterdam ArenA!

If you fancy splashing out to see two of the best teams in the world right now, £45 could see you watching Real Madrid at the Bernabéu and even Barcelona at Camp Nou! Double the price, but quadruple the quality of football! All prices for average grade B games, prices vary depending on grade, as they do here.

These are all teams who play at the very top of their respective leagues and are on the whole a much cheaper day than the average day out at an English stadium.

So there you have it. Some of the top teams in Europe, most of them playing in the Champions League too, for around the £20 mark.

“But Adam,” I hear you cry, “What’s this got to do with Ipswich Town?". This has everything to do with Ipswich Town.

I have always been a loyal supporter, wherever I have lived in the world, I have always worn my Suffolk Punch with pride.

But now that I’ve been living back in Ipswich I find myself being priced out of Portman Road, especially for the quality of football on the pitch and atmosphere in the stadium (or lack thereof).

I get down when I can, but I simply cannot afford the day out any more. I could do so much more with the money spent a month on watching Ipswich. And by the looks of it, 15,000 empty seats agree with me.

But this is not just a problem at Ipswich Town. Prices across the board in English football are very high - I heard tickets at the Emirates were changing hands for £60 for a grade A game - and this is leading to a need for instant results, half empty stadia (excluding Manchester United, Chelsea etc) and the ‘booing culture’.

I can only assume this has come from being charged through the nose and seeing your team not really care on £50,000 a week.

So please people, let’s get this message spread far and wide that we won’t be ripped off for football any more and petition to get prices dropped, before English football is destroyed by pure greed.

Lesta_Tractor added 12:20 - Feb 28 surely the cost of tickets and actually travelling to random games amounts to the same as the cheapest tickets at PR?
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JWM added 12:39 - Feb 28 £35 a ticket for a casual purchase is just plain mad given the sheer lack of quality we are getting at Portman Road. I travel up from Crawley with my 2 sons about 12 times a season and it costs me for the day £100 with food and petrol. I really wouldn't mind if the performances on the pitch were halfway decent. There are 100s of Townies down in my neck of the woods in Sussex and they all reckin I'm bonkers to be paying that sort of money atm!

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Pessimistic added 12:50 - Feb 28 I live in the Netherlands adamisablue and to get a season ticket for Ajax cost about 350 quid so ripped off indeed you are! Ajax are nearly always in the Champions League too because the Dutch first division is not very strong. I think ticket pricing in England is way over the top. Even some of Town's top wage earners get over 10,000 pounds a week and given the quality of football they produce this is absolutely astounding!

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sirbenofmorlingshire added 14:32 - Feb 28 I know everyone harps on about ticket prices, I'll be honest, I think they are too high, but if you go to see Peter Kay live or Bon Jovi at the O2, you're still paying top dollar for a half decent seat in the UK. You can argue the point all day long, but is the cost of tickets relative to earnings/cost of living in these listed countries? Do these clubs run at capacity week in week out? The point being, just because they are cheaper doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily sell out and also you don’t know about wage structures, cost of living, does your average Dutchman think Ajax is value for money, maybe there is a German forum arguing the same saying Bayern is too pricey? FYI - I can buy a pack of 20 smokes in the USA for about £3, doesn’t mean the whole country takes up smoking just because it’s cheaper out there than here. What’s the test to prove ticket pricing is too high; lower prices for a trial period??? I can’t see it working, if you say an average ticket at town is £30 and you get 15,000 people, that’s £450k income; knock that down to £15 and you get 25000 punters (which is unlikely) you now get £375k on the door (£75k LESS than at £30!!!). Your overhead to manage the additional 10,000 people also increases, so it actually costs the club more. So to be honest adamisablue, do the maths it’s not rocket science, lower price does NOT guarantee bigger crowds, even if it did it doesn’t mean your profitability will be any more, it may actually be less. Quantity is not always better than quality. Another valid point is, are there actually 25k-30k who actually WOULD WANT to watch town week in week out… No there isn’t. I had season tickets all through the 90’s and naughties and we’d only ever be at capacity on big games – AND THAT WAS WHEN WE WERE GOOD AND WORTH SEEING!!! I think you’ll find the demand simply isn’t there. I actually like the article and appreciate the research, me and my chaps do the same and pick random places to go on a Jolly, it’s great fun… however prices will come down when you see wages come down, house prices come down, and you spot pigs flying around the sky. Good little blog though.

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bugledog123 added 16:47 - Feb 28 Interesting article - thanks. Portman Road is just too expensive!
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MyBlueHeaven added 01:14 - Mar 1 Sir Ben of... has a point but this is a short-termist view. I would suggest that a 25,000+ crowd for each home game would, whilst costing the club financially on a 'per game' basis, give us an extra 10-15 points a season from improved results. If I was an ITFC director I would be looking very closely at the higher match days 'costs' of larger crowds with cheaper tickets, against the cost of signing - and paying - a player. These are admittedly 'beer mat' maths but let's take Sir Ben's £75k a match drop in earnings. In fact, let's put that up to £100k for the ease of the sums and to over-budget (possibly). £100,000 x 23 home games = £2,300,000. So that's more or less one signing on £15k a week wages. Would that signing bring us 10-15 points a season? Unlikely based on recent evidence. I would suggest a rethinking of our spending strategy is in order.

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DrJeckyll added 16:57 - Jun 25 I think the booing culture is a sign that the demographic of football supporters has changed with the vastly increased ticket prices. Going to PR used to be easily affordable for the working class man. When I left school in 1986 I could go to PR for a pound. To put this in perspective, 20 Benson and Hedges cost me £1.50 and the absolute lowest income I could expect was £27.00 pound if I was unlucky enough to end up on a YTS scheme, because I couldn't find a proper job. Before I left school I could easily afford the 50p it cost me to go from my pocket money, and my Dad was on the dole most of the time, so pocket money was exactly that. Football has been priced out of the range of the working class man now, the support in the stadiums now comes from a different section of society.

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