FA Cup 2025-26

[Clyde1998]

£17!?

[Pepe the Horseman]

Seen a bit of uproar on twitter about that, but is £17 really that unreasonable? You probably have to pay that to go see Maidenhead these days.

[Royals and Racers]

Seen a bit of uproar on twitter about that, but is £17 really that unreasonable? You probably have to pay that to go see Maidenhead these days.

£ 18 in advance £20 on the day

[Clyde1998]

Seen a bit of uproar on twitter about that, but is £17 really that unreasonable? You probably have to pay that to go see Maidenhead these days.

I think it is in context of what we've become used to for FA Cup pricing.

Also a huge missed opportunity to get a half decent crowd in for a game people may not be particularly interested in; can't imagine we'll have more than about 3,500 home fans for this now. Feel we could've got at least 6-7k with £10 pricing (and some attempt at getting people to go).

[Sutekh]

£17 will kill the attendance for a side badly struggling to find any sort of form. A new manager might spark interest but they’ll be otherwise doomed.

[Clyde1998]

I understand it's only been a couple of days, but so far we appear to have sold 271 tickets.

That's not indicative of a good crowd.

You'd imagine there will be two (relatively) strong periods of sales - in the couple of days after they've gone on sale and (especially) the couple of days before the fixture is to be played.

[RG30]

I don't really understand the moaning about the ticket prices. These games run at a huge loss for the club. The gate receipts also have to be split between the away team and the FA, and add to that as the home team the club have to foot the bill for Carlisle's overnight stay.

[Sutekh]

I don't really understand the moaning about the ticket prices. These games run at a huge loss for the club. The gate receipts also have to be split between the away team and the FA, and add to that as the home team the club have to foot the bill for Carlisle's overnight stay.

Foot the bill for the visitors

That’s ****** ridiculous, even more *******stupid if Carlisle had to foot the bill if Reading were visiting them

[Snowflake Royal]

I don't really understand the moaning about the ticket prices. These games run at a huge loss for the club. The gate receipts also have to be split between the away team and the FA, and add to that as the home team the club have to foot the bill for Carlisle's overnight stay.

Yeah, I mean we all know we need to raise more money to cover costs.

You can't even get close to 2 pints for a tenner these days, football is obviously going to cost more.

Fact is ticket prices have gone up very little in 15 odd years, whilst costs have spiralled hugely.

[MR. CYNICAL]

I don't really understand the moaning about the ticket prices. These games run at a huge loss for the club. The gate receipts also have to be split between the away team and the FA, and add to that as the home team the club have to foot the bill for Carlisle's overnight stay.

Yeah, I mean we all know we need to raise more money to cover costs.

You can't even get close to 2 pints for a tenner these days, football is obviously going to cost more.

Fact is ticket prices have gone up very little in 15 odd years, whilst costs have spiralled hugely.

Actually there are some pubs in the South believe it or not where you can but two pints for a tenner and I'm not including spoons!

[Snowflake Royal]

I don't really understand the moaning about the ticket prices. These games run at a huge loss for the club. The gate receipts also have to be split between the away team and the FA, and add to that as the home team the club have to foot the bill for Carlisle's overnight stay.

Yeah, I mean we all know we need to raise more money to cover costs.

You can't even get close to 2 pints for a tenner these days, football is obviously going to cost more.

Fact is ticket prices have gone up very little in 15 odd years, whilst costs have spiralled hugely.

Actually there are some pubs in the South believe it or not where you can but two pints for a tenner and I'm not including spoons!

If you include our subsidised work bar, you can still get about 3, but I don't think that really counts.

[Clyde1998]

I don't really understand the moaning about the ticket prices. These games run at a huge loss for the club. The gate receipts also have to be split between the away team and the FA, and add to that as the home team the club have to foot the bill for Carlisle's overnight stay.

Ticket prices don't exist in isolation - they impact attendance; they impact secondary expenditure.

If we say every ticket sold is an adult one to keep these figures simple: for the club to make a post-tax revenue of £30k from this fixture (at £17), they'd need 2,206 tickets to be sold. For the club to achieve that revenue at £10 per ticket, they'd need 3,750 sales.

Since Covid, our five FA Cup matches (Watford; Milton Keynes; Fleetwood; Harborough; Burnley) have been priced at £15 per ticket and we've averaged 4,778 home fans. The two Saturday games in 2020 (Blackpool; Cardiff) were priced at £10 and averaged 9,918 home fans.

Even if you say attendances have dropped overall since 2020: 9,918 home fans compared to an average of 13,289 at non-evening league games in the 2019-20 season up until Covid (74.6%); 4,778 home fans is being compared to an average of 12,808 (37.3%) since Covid - exactly half proportionally.

Using this season's home average (11,659) as the base - £10 tickets with 74.6% uptake is 8,698 (post-tax revenues of £69,584); £15 with 37.3% uptake is 4,349 (£52,188). £17 tickets will be somewhat worse than £15 ones in attendance terms at the very least.

This is without getting into a question about secondary expenditure - particularly food and drink sales. If the average supporter's expenditure stays relatively static to the ticket price, obviously having more fans in the ground will lead to greater revenues here. Even if you say there's a drop off (as the makeup of supporter changes), you'd need a drop of 50% per head to end up with the same food and drink revenue from the fixture between £10 and £15 match tickets with the attendance differences from the paragraph above. There may be additional merchandise sales with higher crowds too.

Obviously the ticket category distribution does need to be considered, but you can more than make up for any ticket reductions through increased attendances and secondary expenditure.

There's also greater potential to get kids to the game with cheaper tickets - which could have longer term effects in multiple areas; the act of basic goodwill towards supporters; the fact this game comes in the middle of three home league matches; etc.

Worth also noting the ticket revenue distribution between the clubs and FA is only taken into account after expenses are accounted for (and don't include non-ticket revenues, such as food and drink). Even if it came before, I don't know what the breakeven point is for a game like this (for any match for that matter), but I imagine most of the costs are fairly fixed until you get to the point of opening up more stands.

[Fox Talbot]

I wouldn't mind paying the higher ticket price if the club also said, 'we're taking the FA Cup seriously this year and aiming for 3rd Round minimum. There's a lot of prize money at stake so we'll be putting out a strong side 1st XI every round.'

If we don't put out a strong side Carlisle could beat us. They're in good form and the way things are going we could even be playing them in L2 next season. God forbid.

[Snowflake Royal]

I wouldn't mind paying the higher ticket price if the club also said, 'we're taking the FA Cup seriously this year and aiming for 3rd Round minimum. There's a lot of prize money at stake so we'll be putting out a strong side 1st XI every round.'

If we don't put out a strong side Carlisle could beat us. They're in good form and the way things are going we could even be playing them in L2 next season. God forbid.

If we do put out a strong side, Carlisle could beat us.

[Clyde1998]

I wouldn't mind paying the higher ticket price if the club also said, 'we're taking the FA Cup seriously this year and aiming for 3rd Round minimum. There's a lot of prize money at stake so we'll be putting out a strong side 1st XI every round.'

If we don't put out a strong side Carlisle could beat us. They're in good form and the way things are going we could even be playing them in L2 next season. God forbid.

Doing well in the FA Cup could be financially massive for us, especially if we can get into the third round and get a good draw.

Would've been good to have cheap tickets to get a good crowd in to support which ever team was put out, but could very well be one of our lower FA Cup crowds of recent years.