Sport’s hiking of ticket prices for live sport is completely at odds with many of its marketing efforts and risks alienating future generations of would-be fans, writes Matt Readman.
Last week, a BBC Sport investigation revealed just how sharply the cost of watching live sport has risen in the UK. Across the Ashes, the Open, Wimbledon, Formula 1, the Ryder Cup and FA Cup, selected ticket prices have increased by an average of around 90 per cent in just a few years – more than twice the rate of inflation.
Sports executives have rallied to defend this. Operating costs have risen. So too have fan expectations. And, they argue, the profits flow back into grassroots sport. All fair points. But let’s be honest about the underlying reason: they’re raising prices because they can.
Like any market, ticket prices are governed by supply and demand. And the UK is fortunate that its biggest sporting events have never been more desirable. Sports executives will argue that their prices are justifiably in line with market value. But this is circular logic.
Nobody wants to be the one leaving money on the table, but the worry is that live sport’s ticketing market begins to spiral out of control. Keep increasing prices at this rate and we won’t simply change what fans pay, we’ll change what fans we have altogether.
There’s a famous line from Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” It’s a question sport needs to ask itself: not whether it can charge these prices, but whether it should.
We want to get kids off screens but price them out of alternatives
The first consideration is a moral one. Should sporting institutions take advantage of the very people who sustain them? Fans’ loyalty is valuable. But it also makes them vulnerable.
The second reflection is political. A recent DCMS report found that adults living in the most deprived parts of the country were only half as likely to attend live sport as those in the least deprived.
Sport is part of our national culture. Yet the more expensive it becomes, the more exclusive it gets. If only affluent families can afford to attend major events, we risk cutting entire communities off from the sports that have traditionally brought people together.
Sport also needs to be careful it doesn’t sacrifice its long-term commercial health for short-term gains. We know that fandom takes root much earlier than many people realise. Yet ticket prices increasingly prevent young people from experiencing live sport in the way previous generations did.
There are attempts to address this. The Open, for example, offers free tickets to under-16s. That’s a generous offer in principle, but when an adult ticket costs more than £150 it’s hardly an accessible family day out. And it’s an example that many arenas, where every seat is a valuable commodity, would struggle to follow.
Meanwhile, a 2026 Youth Sport Trust report found that 77 per cent of parents believe screen use is reducing the time children spend being physically active. We’re desperately trying to get children off screens and into the real world. Yet when it comes to live sport, we’re actively doing the opposite.
Sport is turning its biggest occasions into playgrounds for the privileged
Perhaps the biggest frustration for me as a marketer is the contradiction in how these sports brand themselves.
Over the past decade I’ve worked on countless briefs, across tennis, golf, cricket and rugby, where the challenge is almost always the same: modernise the brand, become more progressive, more accessible and attract more diverse audiences. In other words, we want to shake off the image that we’re narrow and exclusive.
But what kind of audience does the Ryder Cup in Ireland expect to attract when tickets cost £430? It won’t be the local kids who might become the next Shane Lowry or Rory McIlroy. It will only reinforce the same stereotypes that sports marketers are being paid to dismantle.
The irony is that ticket sales often represent only a fraction of the overall revenue generated by major sporting events. Yet in the pursuit of maximising every last pound from a finite number of tickets, we risk turning our biggest sporting occasions into playgrounds for the privileged.
And that’s the real danger. Not simply that fans are being priced out today, but that the next generation may never feel these places are meant for them in the first place.