Paying Green For Away Day Blues.

At this point, I want to thank Scunthorpe United for having the most informative website of any League One club, and the good folk at Sheffield Utd, Walsall, Preston North End, Carlisle Utd and Bury for getting back to my requests promptly - I didn't e-mail every club, though, I'm just singling the good ones, who replied when I did, out for praise.

So what did I find?

Well; this. Although those figures are only approximate in for a few clubs (some teams didn't respond to my e-mail about categorisation of games, so I looked back at previous years, and what other teams who categorise were doing), there's something very definitely going on there. There's four clubs; Preston North End, Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United (of whom more later) and Huddersfield Town, whose fans are being charged more to see their teams playing away from home than the rest of the division.

I thank Bury FC here, for their website details their match categorisation (a difference of only £1, from £16 to £17) as being for increased policing costs incurred by having a higher number of away fans. That's honest and, at that price, fair either way.

Why, then, are Preston North End, £499, ahead of Sheffield Wednesday £494, and Huddersfield Town £491? All three teams were Category A games in every rubric I saw, so that difference is the difference between Preston's £17 uniform matchday prices - Huddersfield Town's £25 tickets, and Sheffield Wednesday's £22 tickets. This doesn't tell the whole story, though. There's only a small difference in the prices of away tickets for Huddersfield Town's visitors (£4 taking you from £25 down to £21), and only £2 at Sheffield Wednesday (£22 to £20) but Sheffield United's price difference, as we know, is massive (£14.50; from £28.50, for the big teams, to £20, for the middle, to £14, for the teams they expect to be less popular). This, however, isn't the biggest differential; that 'honour' goes to MK Dons, who charge £25 for a few games (I make it four - again, this is an approximation based on the first half of their season, for which grading has been released) and have a single game which is Category C, and thus costs only £10.

We settle down, as the numbers drop, to being around £20 a match (the £460 mark) which is a reasonable standard figure for the division. Preston fans, I would say, are very definitely getting the thick end of the wedge here, while Town and Sheffield Wednesday are paying over the odds at Sheffield United. Chesterfield, for some reason (which I assume is their location) feature in a lot of Category A lists, which leaves them holding an unlikely 5th spot in the Away Tickets cost chart. The second half of the season, and the flexibility of game classification, may cut them a bit of slack here.

There's a second leg to these numbers, though. The season tickets. Now, before we get too far into this, there's a few things to point out; Hartlepool's tickets cost £100 this season. I know the figures may say different, but if I was in any way interested in regularly attending Victoria Park, I'd have shelled out the £100 earlier on, and avoiding the £354 minimum now. Huddersfield's tickets were also well below the low watermark of £403 I found for anyone not accompanying a child in a main stand. So, what does the season tickets graph look like.

Again, we've got a constant at around £310-ish (that works out at about £13.50 per matchday, which isn't a bad price in anyone's book. Notable mentions here to Scunthorpe, particularly after they've spent time in the division above, and Charlton Athletic, of whom more later. At the end of the day, there appears a lot more disparity in the season ticket prices, and there doesn't seem to be any particularly obvious reasoning behind it. Again, what I would point out here is that Preston, once again, come out with a lot of credit for their low prices, as well as Scunthorpe, despite having been in a higher division last season.

This is a little misleading, though. My decision to use the prices for a season ticket now is flawed. Not just because Town's tickets are expensive, though I have to say they are now the Early Bird and renewal offers have gone, but because I'm trying to get a picture of a fan who attends regularly, and people don't go from attending zero games one season to 46 the next - so it doesn't make sense to represent them as doing such. Recalculating the figures, then, I decided to go with the cheapest available season ticket for a single adult - lots of clubs (credit to each and every one of them) have special deals for families - whenever it could be bought. I think my favourite of the family bundles was Tranmere's 'Lad and Dad' ticket; basically a ticket for a father and son at the same price as the father's would be. Keep getting the kids involved, League One teams, you're a credit to yourselves for doing it.

Of course, not all teams have special early offers, but enough of them do that its worth having another table here - so I've got an Early Bird/Latecomer Totalising chart here, too, to give a truer representation of the figures we're working with. The green bars, as you might guess, represent the cheapest tickets at their cheapest point. The red top-ups take the prices up to what you would have to pay today (having missed, of course, two games off the ticket, though that's not really the point I'm making). It is the green bar figures I will be carrying forward.

Back then, as I mentioned, to Charlton Athletic. The cheapest ticket for 23 games at the Valley this season is £240. Not a bad price, you might well think. Well, yes and no. For the SE7 contingent, the tickets make perfect financial sense. However, Charlton, along with Hartlepool, charge £25 a ticket for away fans, regardless, making the £575 total (one ticket per fan from each club) the most expensive. Which, although I'm no formal expert in these matters, suggests to me that the lower price for home season ticket holders is being subsidised by away fans and non-ST holders (who are routinely charged the same as away fans) rather than being the strings free offer these things are portrayed as, though I'm tempted to view Hartlepool's offer in a more positive light - given the £100 was only achieved after a certain amount of people applied - had only 2,000 taken them up, it would've cost £200. This is a 'special' offer; Charlton's is just the basic cost of watching a team being supplemented, in no small part, by charging away fans £25.

So, then. A conclusion. Who pays the most to watch their team? Sheffield United, but only virtue of their £369 season tickets - higher than anyone (Colchester were 2nd, £12 lower). Their £856 (approximately) that Sheffield United fans would have to fork out to follow their team this season is higher by £26.50 than any other club - the second highest being, as you may have guessed, Huddersfield Town, then Colchester. Top marks go to Hartlepool, obviously, and beyond them, Yeovil, who are only charging £16 across the board for away fans and have the 2nd cheapest season tickets in the division. The problem Sheffield United have got is their double-whammy of being at the top end of both the season ticket cost and the away ticket cost - but they'd be paying even more if they had to visit Bramall Lane. It suggests to me that the ticket prices were set either without even considering the relegation they came to experience, or with the money-worries we know they have at the forefront - which would explain the imbalance in the costs for their away end.

We already know League One is a contrast. From standing on the terraces at Rochdale for £15 every match (pre-paid ticket) to sitting in the glamorous surrounds of the Valley for £25 every week, and everything in between. It's the meeting point of the teams on the way down and the teams on the way up, and the ticket prices reflect that; at the end of the day, watching Scunthorpe for 46 games costs over £700, which is a lot of money to lay out - £70 per month of the season at least, and of course, these figures don't include cup games, which Scunthorpe will play at least three, and more likely around double that amount. What I have learned, though, is that clubs I though might charge a lot (Preston and Scunthorpe, in particularly) don't necessarily do so, and clubs I thought would be cheaper (Hartlepool, particularly) cost a lot more money than I thought they might.

At the end of the day, if you're going to pay the money, you'll pay it however much it is - look at the Premiership's attendance figures. What it doesn't excuse, though, is the difference in tickets Sheffield Utd charge away fans as a matter of routine - Bury's £14 is not a 'one-off' figure, or a special offer, and for that to be a touch under 50% of the cost of a Category A match for a game at the same stadium in the same competition is nothing like balance, and nothing like fair.

Big winners, in my book; Preston - £17 tickets across the board for away fans, affordable season tickets and prompt response to my e-mail.

Big sinners; Sheffield United - that price difference between £28.50 and £14 is too big, and cannot be justified. Charlton Athletic - £25 for away fans in a ground where home fans can get in for (effectively) less than half that (£10.34) with a season ticket isn't just to the travelling support either.

The big lesson? Given the price increases between early bird season and prices normally, and tickets before matchday and on matchday, the best advice is; if you plan to go to football, book early, wherever you're going.

It has also been brought to my attention that a number of clubs charge booking fees for using credit or debit cards; I haven't incorporated these into the ticket prices - just used the face value of the ticket. My knowledge of the situation is limited, but I'd guess that these fees vary immensely.