The Missing Element In The Football Crowds Debate - 1/10/2005

The marginal early season decline in football crowds has been attributed to all sorts of factors: price (with good reason); saturation television coverage; predictable outcomes; defensive formations in the Premiership; and awkward days and times for matches. However, one key factor is generally overlooked (other than by a blogger known as the New York Addick): the general softening of the economy. Britain's economy grew at its slowest rate for twelve years in the second quarter, the latest for which official figures are available, and that was before the effects of petrol and other energy prices started to impact family budgets. The CBI has released the weakest retail survey for twenty-three years. House of Fraser, the country's third biggest department store group, has reported that its underlying sales fell 4.3 per cent in the first half of the year and have slipped back even further since then. Alan Giles, chief executive of HMV, the record and music group, which has seen a 9.2 per cent fall in sales since the year began, said people faced increased pressure on disposable income which meant they were staying at home. 'This perhaps even explains why Premiership clubs are seeing attendances fall', he said. Leaving aside the fanantical hard core, often single men with no family responsibilities or 'empty nesters' like myself, spending on football is a discretionary item in a family's entertainment budget, to be traded off against other forms of leisure expenditure like holidays. Football clubs need to realise that demand for their seats is not as inelastic (not price responsive) as demand for petrol, for example. Inelasticity of demand is high when there are no substitutes (in effect the case for liquid hydrocarbons). Football fans who buy tickets on a game by game basis can stay at home if they wish.