Premier League: Liverpool fans set to boycott Hull City match due to high ticket prices

Last year, Liverpool’s fans paid £35 to watch their team play away against Hull City. This cost is over and above the money they spend to get to the KC Stadium — a 180 minute drive from Merseyside. This year, they have been asked to pay £50 for the same fixture — a 31 percent increase — and a number which has irked members of two the club’s largest and most influential supporters groups, Spirit of Shankly and Spion Kop 1906. [caption id=“attachment_2216862” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Expect empty seats during Hull City vs Liverpool. Reuters[/caption] The group has been leading protests against the ticket price, and hundreds of supporters have joined in — deciding to purchase £10 children tickets and not travel, meaning that the football world will witness around 500 empty seats at the away end on matchday. A statement on spiritofshankly.com said: Stoke City played Hull City at the KC Stadium in August of this season. Their tickets were £16. Everton FC played Hull City at the KC Stadium in December of this season. Their tickets were £35. The mark up for Liverpool FC fans compared to Stoke City is 200 percent. The mark up compared to Everton FC is just over 31 percent. That’s double the cost for Evertonians compared to Stoke City and then treble the cost for Liverpool FC fans. Remember here, we’re watching the same opposition, from the same seats, from the same stand, with the same facilities in the same league. Read that again - £48 for a Liverpool FC fan and £16 for a Stoke City fan. A 200 percent mark up. This is unacceptable. Add to this the fact that the Premier League signed a mega TV deal recently - worth more than £5 billion. Unlike in the La Liga, where clubs can sell television rights in an individual capacity, the Premier League follows a distribution model where TV money is spread across all teams. That clubs are raising ticket prices at rapid rates while also getting more money is simply wrong. A tweet from a Liverpool fan sums it up:

In 14 years ticket prices have increased 100%. My wages only by 20%. Getting priced out of Football #LFC #Boycothull pic.twitter.com/KcXOBpGxaq

— The AJP Group (@the_ajp_group) April 27, 2015

“The average price of the cheapest tickets across English football has risen at almost twice the rate of the cost of living since 2011,” BBC’s Price of Football Study revealed last year. The study also reveals that the cheapest season ticket at Liverpool is 40 percent more than the average comparable cost for the Premier League of £509. Manager Brendan Rodgers has backed the support, saying: “Like everything in modern football I respect the supporters right to protest. Supporters work very hard to earn their money to go to football games so they have a right to protest,” he was quoted as saying in a Eurosport report. After all, a football club is nothing without its fans. Liverpool play Hull City at 00.15 IST on Wednesday.