Football Fixtures: It’s the Economy Stupid!

As the season draws to an end plans are already in hand for the scheduling of next year’s football fixtures.  So this is an open plea to the powers that be to consider the humble fan but for more than the usual reasons.

Charlton played 11 league games on a Tuesday night over the season including away fixtures at Leeds (away fans 303), Derby (311), Blackpool (222) and Bolton (234) with a further two games held on a Friday evening.  For away fans these games generally mean taking an afternoon off work or traveling major commuter routes in the expensive rush hour.  After the match it means a tiring journey home arriving back at two in the morning or in many cases an overnight stay as the last trains have left by the time the match is over.  This makes it difficult and undesirable for many fans to attend without sacrificing time off work and costs over and above weekend travel, and the attendance figures back this up.

Turning up at the match is usually the only way we get to see our teams play for these fixtures.  Miss it and all you’ll get to see will be the goals on Sky Sports News or Youtube.  There won’t even be the obligatory two and a half minutes on the Football League Show.  

As football fans we often appear to be bottom of the list of priorities, especially when it comes to scheduling fixtures and yet some sensible planning would not only allow fans to see their team in action but also benefit so many more in a real commercial sense.  To coin that memorable phrase once uttered by an American politician “It’s the economy, stupid!”

We all know the disparate financial gap between the Premier League and the Championship with match day revenue being a key source of income.  Who knows, Bolton with debts of around £173m could certainly have done with more than the 234 hardy Charlton fans that made the long journey North that night.

While we may not realise it, professional football plays an important role in the economy.  The economist would put forward the argument as follows:-

A football club arranges a game of football.  Fans buy tickets, programmes, merchandise and beverages from the club allowing it to purchase inventory from suppliers, employ footballers, ground staff etc, who all spend their money, creating a knock on effect in the economy.  Similarly, fans travel to the ground, meet up and have a few pints and some food thus boosting bus and rail companies and stimulating the trade for local hostelries and eateries in the area, again stimulating trade and employment in the economy.  The government gets more tax revenue from VAT, corporation tax and PAYE thus allowing it to spend more money on public services or cut taxes giving individuals the ability to spend more money.

You only have to look at the activity in and around Charlton on a match day to see this in action.  It’s clearly a bit more complicated than this but you get the general idea.

By playing those games mentioned above on a weekend many more away fans would attend.  If we assume a further 700 fans would attend those games and that they each spend £25 on a match ticket, £30 on travel, £20 subsistence this gives a boost of £52,500 for each game.  Assuming each team across the four leagues has six weekday games that are difficult to travel to over the season then that gives us a total of about £28.35m over the season.  The assumptions are rather simplistic (for example many Premier League games are sold out regardless), and this is just a first order effect for the clubs and that does not include the second effect stimulus for the local economy but one can see that the figures are not insubstantial.

It therefore also makes both commercial and economic sense for the Football League to prioritise weekday fixtures such that more away fans can attend.  Given the need to generate additional tax revenue I'm surprised that no political party has yet put it in their manifesto.

Having said this I do appreciate that the busy season means that it is not possible to avoid playing on weekday nights, and I personally wouldn’t want to get rid of my fix of mid-week action under the spot lights.  Tuesday nights are always going to be hard for some given that children have to get up to go to school the next day and our supporter base is spread over the South East.  We also have to bear in mind the regular plea for Boxing Day games to be held locally, given the work on the railways over the festive season.

However, we currently do have four reasonably local teams that are within easy distance for a night game including Millwall, Brentford, Watford and Fulham.  The atmosphere, if not the result, at Fulham away this season was electric.  Furthermore other teams such as Brighton, Ipswich, Reading and even Norwich can be reached reasonably by most in an evening.  So it is possible to go some way to accommodating this for many clubs.

It won’t completely solve the issue but it will go a long way to getting more away fans to games and boosting the economy and the financial situation of our clubs.  Here’s hoping for a bout of common sense, and don’t forget, each time you attend a match you are assisting the economy!