If you are going to price gouge, do it to the other team’s fans!

The media has been abuzz this week with discussion over the price of tickets for the away section at the Arsenal vs Manchester City match in London this weekend.  Arsenal, decided to raise the price of the tickets in the away section to £62 (about $99 U.S.), which has made many supporters of Man City and the media very angry.  Manchester City actually returned 900 tickets to Arsenal of the several thousand that they were given for their fan section, as supporters of Man City have refused to pay so much to go travel to London to watch the game.

Which might have been a smart thing, as I believe it is now 35 years since Man City has beaten Arsenal at Highbury or the Emirates. (Yes, I’m an Arsenal supporter, and I keep track of these things…)

Notably, Arsenal and other teams in England have begun using multi-tiered pricing where different games are priced differently based on the opponents and other factors.  This practice means big games like Man City vs Arsenal will garner a high price, while QPR vs Norwich will be rather cheap.  It is also a practice which is not new to fans in North America, where many of the sport leagues use variable ticket pricing to try and capture greater consumer surplus.  Economists have begun to examine this practice of price dispersion, and research studies looking at similar practices in Theaters have found that it has boosted revenue for organizations.  Which means it seems only natural for sport organizations to copy this behavior.

But Arsenal fans are also unhappy, and have complained to the club this week because of the high prices.  They noted that in other countries across Europe, tickets often run between ten to twenty Euros.  I think with the growing nature of the business that is the Premier League, fans will only be disappointed in the future as ticket prices continue to soar, especially for matches with top tier opponents.

 

Trouble Brewing in the Arsenal Takeover Bid?

Greetings IJSF blog readers.  Just a bit of background before I start this post.  I am a big supporters of Arsenal, and have been for many years now (maybe it has something to do with Arsene Wenger have a degree in Economics).  Additionally, I also live in Columbia, Missouri which just happens to be the home of Stanley Kroenke, the most recent foreign investor attempting a takeover bid of another top Premier League club in England.

Yesterday news began to sprout around the sport websites that Stanley Kroenke was moving forward in an attempt to takeover Arsenal Football Club.  In moving to buy more shares, Kroenke hit the 62.89% ownership of the club mark, meaning that he now has the controlling stake of the club, and must make a cash offer to all the remaining share holders.  Kroenke’s takeover bid has hit a bit of a snag, as Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov has refused to sell Kroenke his 27% stake of the club.  Rather, on the SkySports blog they are reporting that Mr. Usmanov tried to make a counter against Kroenke’s takeover, supposedly offering Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith a £13,000 pound per share offer, more than what she had agreed to with Kroenke for her shares.  All of that said, Lady Bracewell-Smith refused the offer, as she already had a full agreement with Mr. Kroenke.

With news of Usmanov’s defiance, the Arsenal Supporters Trust, a group of about 1,800 supporters announced that they would also not be selling the few shares of Arsenal which they held.

What does this all really mean?

In order from Kroenke to fully takeover the club, he needs to hold 90% of the clubs shares, and at that point it would force all the remaining shareholders to sell their stake to Kroenke.  However, with Usmanov sitting on 27% and trying to fight back, it seems that this is not likely to happen.  Usmanov’s hopes of countering Kroenke, and having himself takeover seem an even more unlikely happening, so Arsenal may now be facing a battle of two owners causing headaches for each other.  Kroenke’s offer for the remaining shares would have made Usmanov a nice profit, but from the look of things, it looks like Usmanov may be digging in for the long-run.

This whole episode does bring up two other interesting points.

First, many seem worried about club debts, and the use of Premier League clubs as debt servicing for rich foreign owners, as has been done by Malcolm Glazer and Manchester United.  Kroenke in his bid made sure to note that this takeover was not going to be done by taking out loans, but that he would be making cash offers for the remaining stakes, and that Arsenal would not be saddled with any of the debt.  Still, it seems that many really reject the idea of Kroenke fully taking over Arsenal, and that leads into my second point.  Currently 10 of 20 Premier League clubs are fully owned or have a majority of their stake owned by foreign investors.  Notably all of the “big” clubs have been taken over by foreign investment, with the top 4 teams in the table (Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea & Man City) all being owned by foreigners.  While many will probably not care as long as their team is doing well, there are some who are probably most likely worried about non-UK owners slowly taking over more and more of the most popular league in the world.