Tickets for top events are becoming increasingly expensive

333 dollars for a seat at the US Open semi-final, 95 euros to sit behind the goal at the European Championship final, or 125 euros for the basketball team’s Olympic gold medal match – even for the “cheapest” tickets to top sporting events this summer, fans had to dig deep into their pockets. The trend of rising ticket prices has continued mercilessly at the most recent sporting highlights.

“It is true that ticket prices for major sporting events have risen in recent years, sometimes even faster than inflation,” says Christoph Breuer, professor of sports economics at the German Sport University Cologne, in an interview with the Sport-Informations-Dienst (SID). Sports fans are worried: will elite-class events soon only be for the financial elite?

That is probably the dream of financial investors, who are now investing a lot of money in major events and are therefore partly responsible for the rising prices. They have a “deep interest in increasing the financial profit from a sporting event or a sporting organization,” explains Breuer. Many sporting organizations are also financially “with their backs against the wall.” They want to compensate for this with high ticket revenues, because they can set these freely.

The idea is that people will buy anyway. As long as demand is high, and it was for the latest highlights, organizers can raise prices – even in football. So will fans soon be paying extreme sums for the cheapest seats at the World Cup final, like at the Super Bowl in the USA?

“In theory, that’s conceivable,” says Breuer: “In a classic economics textbook, you would say: From a profit-maximizing perspective, the optimal ticket price is one that is so high that the demand for the stadium is still met.” But in German football in particular, the situation is different.

The business people behind the scenes are also aware that “the atmosphere in the stadium is important.” And on the other hand, in sport, and this is particularly important in football, there is always a kind of social mission,” says Breuer. At least in club football, the expert does not see the danger of astronomical prices: “There is respect for the power of the fans.” A Bundesliga game is a “co-creation,” the players on the pitch form a unit with the fans in the stands. “And that just doesn’t work if the ticket prices are significantly increased, especially in the standing area.”

And if they do, then protests like the recent dispute over investors entering the DFL could help. This influence has shown “that the legitimate interests of the fans are being heard there,” says Breuer. Even the European Football Union (UEFA) recently took a surprising step towards the fans by capping the price of away tickets in international competitions.

The English Premier League club Aston Villa, on the other hand, provided a negative example – and promptly got into trouble with its own supporters. The traditional club is returning to the top flight of football after 42 years, and the club is charging fans with season tickets at least 83 euros for a Champions League ticket. The Aston Villa Supporters’ Trust (AVST) condemned this as “very disappointing” and “inappropriate”, saying that the loyal supporters were being “punished and exploited”.

For comparison: The cheapest tickets for the Champions League final in June at Wembley cost around 70 euros.