Search: ' pricing'

Huw Richards sums up the Championship season whilst asking of whether being at the top of the division correlates with playing better football

Do you want your team to play in the Premier League? Well, yes, me too. But this year’s Championship season shows that achieving what we’re told is the Holy Grail – or at least the answer to a £60 million question – can have unwanted side-effects. When your team is newly risen from the lower orders you have certain expectations. Better grounds, bigger crowds and classier football. No doubt about the first two, but hope of number three went largely ungratified.

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With the credit crunch starting to hit fan's pockets, attendances are suffering. Ashley Shaw looks into how Man Utd are trying to deal with the problem

The Manchester United Supporters Trust campaign to urge the Office of Fair Trading to investigate the ticket-pricing policy at Old Trafford represents the first skirmish in what could become a war between cash-strapped supporters and football clubs at all levels.

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It wasn’t just Derby who were up in arms at QPR’s sudden price hike. Thom Gibbs and his fellow Rangers fans are far from sitting comfortably

How much would you pay to watch Championship football? Coventry have recently offered ticket bundles for three home games against Southampton, Burnley and Derby for the price of £50; some QPR fans paid that last month just to watch their side against Derby. Classed as an “A” category game under a new banding system unveiled 12 days beforehand and seven games into the season, the QPR board deemed a seat in the “Platinum” area of the ground for the Derby game to be worth £50. That gets you a mostly unobstructed view from the middle of the South Africa Road stand, a padded seat and access to a private bar.

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The title race was over by Christmas, but in the end it wasn't that bad a season in League Two, writes Ron Hamilton

Over recent seasons it has become an increasingly popular pastime for League Two aficionados to point and sneer at the lopsided and avaricious Premier League, scoffing at the hype and hoopla in comparison to the somewhat earthier charms of football’s basement division. Yet while much of this scorn is predicated on the assumption that the lower leagues represent the last vestiges of football’s soul, the 2007-08 season has seen the fourth division’s occupation of the moral high ground somewhat ­undermined.

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Poor organisation has turned the battle for tickets for the FA Cup semi-finals into a luck-of-the-draw contest, writes Tom Whitworth

The four participating clubs in this season’s FA Cup semi-finals had the responsibility of fairly distributing their 33,000 Wembley tickets. They have each failed in various ways. The FA had reduced the original pricing structure of £55-£95 to £25-£55 in an attempt to ensure demand was sufficient to fill every seat. But all four clubs compelled fans to purchase tickets for games that followed their quarter-finals rather than rewarding past loyalty.

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