Anyone who has been to a football match in Spain knows how expensive tickets are. Most of my Spanish friends watch football on TV now as, at home, watching a football match is free and, in a bar, it’s only the price of a couple of cañas. So it’s not surprising to hear Spanish football clubs whining about how season ticket sales are down and how some games see less than 10,000 Spanish fans attending.
What is surprising, at least to many Spaniards, is how much money Spanish football teams are still paying out for over-priced players and how ticket prices are still being kept high. After all, if you had any business sense at all and you can’t get rid of more than half of your tickets every game, don’t you think it would make more sense to bring the prices down?
People like Jose Maria Del Nido, President of Sevilla FC, still don’t seem to get it, however. He’s just been on national TV complaining about Sevilla losing “15 percent of their season ticket holders” and not being able to sell 50 percent of their individual tickets.
In fact, it doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind that when a huge percentage of Spaniards have problems putting a roof over their head or food on the table, buying expensive tickets for a football game is the last thing they’re going to do. And, at the cheapest price of 60 euros, Sevilla FC tickets are some of the most expensive in Europe.
And that also explains why some Spaniards are getting tired of their football teams, the managers and the ridiculously-paid players.
So bad is it getting in some quarters, Spaniards are now lumping in Spanish football teams with banks. Organizations that seem to be happy to gouge the average consumer while pocketing enormous profits themselves.