All's fair in love and football
What’s all the fuss about Manchester United? Mr. Glazer has gained his controlling share of the club and will before long own it in its entirety. The bid is highly leveraged and there will be a not too small debt to pay off once the process is complete. The fans are worried about rising ticket prices along with everything else. The problem here is that people do not see that they have a choice. They will not be forced to pay any amount that they do not agree to, they do not need to go to the games. If Mr. Glazer raises prices beyond a reasonable level the profit will trail off, if profit begins to drop then so does his income, so he will not raise prices by such a level. The main reason for this concern is the rise in prices for Tampa Bay Buccaneers tickets when he bought the club. However, what people don’t think about is that in the years that he was raising prices, he was taking the club up in the league. Nobody would expect Manchester united to charge the same price as a conference team and this is no different. Manchester united is already close to the top of its game; it doesn’t have a long way to go to get any better, so rising prices won’t be as easy. However, the truth is that people pay to see a game, that price is set as the amount agreed between the seller and buyer, if the fans buy the tickets then they are agreeing with the price. If they do not agree with the price, the answer is simple, don’t buy.
posted by Dan at 12:14 PM
2 Comments:
The case of ticket prices at Manchester Utd, and most world class football clubs (AC Milan, Barca, DRFC) is simply supply and demand. What the fans don't realise is that they are already paying less than the equilibrium price. Think about it, the waiting list for a season ticket is something stupid like three years (or probably more) which means that demand outstrips supply. Therefore, by the laws of supply and demand, you raise prices until the demand for tickets is equal to the number of tickets available. I'm sure that Malcom Glazier will know this but I bet he still wouldn't raise prices to the equilibrium. Of course, the counter arguement is that you'll isolate your core fan, average working joe and his family, but that is just the way society is!
Exactly, supply and demand is the mechanism that sets prices at the propper level. If the tickets at Manchester United are less than the average, then that means that they are worth less. If Mr Glazer raises prices, he will loose effective demand, the only way he will raise prices would be to maximise profit based on the current demand curve.
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