How a 5% Rise Became 46%
While basking in the glory of the best Aston Villa season in a generation, the issue of ticket prices and increases is back, like a Premier League Groundhog Day.
5% seems to be the magic number for Villa, as season tickets, match-by-match tickets, and Champions League tickets are all increasing by this amount. This is far from good news for anyone who wishes to go to a game at Villa Park as a paying home fan this season.
Villa Groundhog Day
Of course, we have been here before. This is the fifth straight season of price increases, which has seen some unlucky season tickets rise by more than the percentage increase, depending on other factors.
But the club have rising costs as well. Yes, they are rising like everything else due to inflation. Inflation has risen year-on-year:
2023 – 4.2%
2024 – 3.5%
2025 – 3.6%
2026 – 3%
Notice anything? Year-on-year, Aston Villa have exceeded the rate of inflation. If inflation is your excuse, then tie the ticket rises to the rate of inflation.
This is the fifth straight season of price increases — and for a Zone 1 season ticket holder, the cumulative damage since 2021/22 is 46% (minimum, not including category and concession shifts). A ticket that cost £684 when prices were frozen at promotion levels now costs £997.50. Five seasons of supposedly modest rises have taken it to the edge of four figures.
Now these excuses are something the Club is leaning into in their press release.
The club set out five principles to justify its pricing strategy.
A Packed Villa Park
Fairer Access for All Fans
Embracing the Next Generation
Loyalty Matters
And finally…
Investment in the Team – We want to achieve our revenue targets to support ongoing investment in the playing squad.
Each one deserves a closer look.
A Packed Villa Park?
Were last season’s league stage Europa League prices aimed at a packed Villa Park? If so, they were a terrible miscalculation. Next season, the redevelopment of the North Stand means it’ll be closed for a season, and a gaping chasm or a building site will let a good portion of the noise and atmosphere out of the stadium. Those that can afford to go will notice an inferior Villa Park next season, and that’s a fact. But a reduced capacity sharpens the demand and supply situation, which the club unfortunately seemingly couldn’t resist testing with an extra 5% on top of their previous ridiculous Champions League ticket prices.
Fairer Access for All Fans?
The removal of the 1888 padded seats, replacing them with Price Zone 1 seats, may seem like a step in the right direction, until you realise these were introduced in 23/24 at £80 for a Cat A game on a padded seat with a scarf. Now they will be a bargain price of £86.50 for a normal seat for the equivalent game. Bring your own scarf and cushion.
Embracing the Next Generation
This can only really be nurtured by the Cup games, which are frozen again at £25 per adult or £10 for an under-18. Just try not to highlight how seriously the Club take domestic cup competitions or the fact that it’s a calculated risk, as two tough away draws next season could see no home cup games in a season, if Unai Emery correctly prioritises the Champions League and Premier League (again).
Loyalty Matters.
As long as you pay for GA+, that is, and skip the queue of members who, with a reduced Villa Park capacity, may never get a ticket and therefore never move up the season ticket waiting list until the following season. That’ll be a hard sell to members this year with the free travel mug.
The Myth of Squad Improvement and Investment in the Team
So the story goes, financial regulations such as PSR and UEFA rules are unfair and hold teams like Aston Villa back from spending money on players and, ultimately, challenging the status quo of the domestic and European elite.
The only way to break this ceiling is apparently to break the backs of your supporters and make them pay more each season, except that’s not true, is it?
If it was true, Aston Villa would have finished trophy-less and in the bottom half this season, going by transfer spend. So there must be more to it than spending money and especially ticket revenue.
Matchday Revenue
Matchday revenue as a percentage of overall revenue has gone like this over the last 4 years of financial results
2022 – 9.02%
2023 – 8.64%
2024 – 10.16%
2025 – 10.18%
So for all the price increases, the percentage increase is minimal. It isn’t moving the PSR needle in a meaningful way, especially when Broadcasting revenue is doing the club’s commercial work for them.
Broadcasting Revenue
2022 – £123.2 million
2023 – £152.6 million
2024 – £184.4 million
2025 – £240.9 million
So with this in mind, does an extra 5% on paying matchgoers improve the squad? No, is the answer; it’s not even close to paying the wages of one player for a season. The rise year on year equates to a total gate increase of £10 million approximately per year.
In real terms, that is less than the increase in agents’ fees Aston Villa paid between February 2024-25 and February 25-26, which increased by £13.4 million. The total agent spend last season? £38.4 million. The second highest in the Premier League behind the financially sound and well-run institution that is Chelsea Football Club.
The Superior Product
But what about the product and the quality of football, I hear some people cry?
Did you not read the figures above?
Yes, the product on display, or certainly the results, especially under the stewardship of Unai Emery, has been vastly superior, most of the time, to what Villa fans had been used to in the preceding seasons, but do you know what else is vastly superior? The broadcast revenue from this success.
Aston Villa’s bank account is already being more than adequately compensated for the improvement of the product by the on-pitch success of the team, without increasing ticket prices; that’s sort of how it works. Finish higher in the league, get into the Champions League, win the Europa League, get more prize money to keep you there.
It isn’t the fans’ job to pay for better performances on the pitch; it’s the prize money, and if you disagree and think it’s directly relatable, how much did you pay to watch Villa throw the game against Spurs?
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The Choice?
‘Well, if you don’t like the prices, just don’t go. Someone else will pay it’
The argument of the unaffected.
The problem is, increasing the ticket prices is the one non-negotiable for fans who live to attend matches. It’s a low blow because it isn’t a choice. They have a captive market of over 27,000 season ticket holders which they keep squeezing, and it is pushing people out during a cost of living crisis. If you keep farming the same patch of soil, eventually it will be barren.
Apologists will argue, if you can afford to go on away trips in Europe, pay travel to go to away games, even dare to go to the cinema or attend a concert, then you have no right to complain about excessive pricing for a Villa Park ticket.
But that’s missing the point. To many fans, Aston Villa is a religion. It isn’t a trip out to the Cinema where you know what you are going to see and how long it is; it isn’t a concert where you know all the songs on the set list. It’s risk and reward where you go to support your team. There’s no guarantee of a return of investment for your money, and that’s what makes it support.
Prices can’t keep going up for the same 90 minutes. You have to draw the line somewhere, when the club you have supported through thick and thin keeps making it harder for you to carry on.
You can increase the cost of concession stands, you can increase the cost of the shirt, you can release more merch drops than Harvey Elliot had appearances and the choice argument is valid. If you don’t like the price, don’t pay it.
What you shouldn’t do is pick on the non-negotiable, the one thing Villa fans place above everything else. Being able to attend a game.
UTV
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I must congratulate you on this piece Sir. The saddest thing is seeing an otherwise well appreciated ownership take the same course as others in the now “much revised” Sky/Legacy Media Big Six! MOMS alongside (some) of the more laddish “bedroom pod casters” has been a great source of informed debate with well written and researched articles for several years. Keep up the dedicated great work. You would hope that NSWE would have employed people to weather watch social media and report back….I hope they are aware of your important contributions to The Fan Base as they echo its opinion very well.