CASE STUDY 013: An English Obsession
When a domestic league goes global, is it possible to serve the locals and the tourists equitably?
“Number of overseas fans at Premier League games rises to 800,000”: this was the title of Jonathan Willson’s 2015 Guardian piece that highlighted the 16x increase in overseas fan attendance of Premier League matches between 2010 and 2015. By 2019, that 800k had grown to 1.6 million. Another 6 years on, you could bet the farm that number is well in to the multiple millions, representing AT LEAST 14% of all 14.7 million match-going fans, over the course of a Premier League season.
When Wilson put pen to paper 10 years ago, he stressed the concerns of local fans over price hikes driven by this foreign demand. Those concerns have evidently reached a tipping point in 2025. Season ticket prices are increasing YoY faster than ever, with Arsenal, Manchester United, and many more announcing another round of increases for the 2025/26 season. While those price increases aren’t solely driven by this foreign demand (let’s all waive to those pesky profit and sustainability regulations staring at us from across the room), it doesn’t take a trained economist to tell you that more buyers in a market will eventually lead to higher prices for the goods or services demanded.
Naturally, the rise in ticket prices has angered locals. Sentiments of “this is our city, our town, our team, our community, our club. Why are we the ones being priced out of seeing it?” are not hard to come by, and you can’t blame them. If you had gone to see your local team play every other week with your grandparents for decades, built a family tradition, and then were suddenly unable to afford that tradition anymore because people from every continent around the world decided that “your” team was worth the trip - you’d likely be pretty upset to say the least.
Unfortunately, this situation is far more complicated, because who is to say the Everton fan in southern California, who wakes up at 4am on every saturday to watch their team play, is less of a fan than the one who lives around the corner from Goodison Park. What about the die hard Spurs fan who stays up till 3am on a Thursday to watch their team play in the cup competitions? Foreign fans love these clubs as much as their locals in many instances, interview a few and it is abundantly clear. As a result, it feels wrong to say they shouldn’t get to have that dream experience of seeing their pride and joy play in the flesh.
So, once again, we find ourselves in this paradoxical situation (our favorite place to be at Studio 14) where servicing two deserving fan groups appears to be at odds. To be completely transparent, there are no easy answers to the situation the Premier League finds itself in on this one. However, there are very clear lessons to be learned. We would like to leave you with these two.
Having a global league, with the best stars in the world, the most entertaining product, and more media attention than any other league has side effects. You will price out the people that made you what you are today. You will alienate those central to your mission and ethos. You will create a paradox that pits fans of the same family against one another.
This is a stark reminder of why, no matter where you are, it is important to support your local. The heart of the footballing experience is kicking a ball around yourself and watching people kick a ball around. No screens, just real colors, real people, real traditions. The impact you have on your local team compounds over decades to produce something you could only have dreamed about today.
