Football is rapidly becoming too expensive, with near-saturation coverage on TV forcing the bigger clubs to cut prices to attract fans at the expense of the lower leagues.
The average floating fan will read the papers and see Blackburn, Wigan and the like advertising tickets for £15, then look at the same cost to sit at Edgar Street and other League Two stadia and consider it a rip-off. The same fan could watch seven games in the past week on TV, and nine in the coming week, for a cost of less than £1 per game in subscription charges.
Next season, the armchair fan will seriously consider investing in a Setanta subscription, adding more Premiership coverage, European leagues, and Conference action that will provide virtually a game a day for less than 50p a match and further eat into the money available to actually go to a stadium.
The average TV payments for next season to each Premiership club is more than the turnover of just about every League Two club combined. Premiership clubs need to either be stopped from discounting tickets, or subsidise the lower leagues. Stopping their own discounting would turn thousands of fans away, and would benefit no-one, but subsidising the lower leagues would help the game to flourish across the country.
In League Two on Saturday 37,124 paid full price admission, while 7,752 paid £5 at Wrexham - more than double their usual gate. The 37,124 paid an average of £13, generating around £500,000.
A £6million subsidy to League Two, £300,000 from each Prem club, would have seen every League Two fan pay £10 over the course of the season. A £11million subsidy would see everyone pay £7 - costing each Premiership club around £600,000 per year, barely over 1.5% of the TV rights deal for an average Premiership club.
A subsidy on a similar £5 arrangement in the Conference would cost each Premiership club £300,000, while a League One arrangement at £9 would cost Premiership clubs less than £1million each.
In total a subsidy of three leagues would cost Premiership sides under £2million each, only 5% of the total TV revenue and a fraction in the increase in TV income for next season with the Premiership champions seeing a £20million increase in TV revenue next season.
Subsidising the lower leagues would be a drop in the ocean to the big sides, but would help many stay afloat.