Friday 8 May 2015

Are you braced for those Premier League prices?

The celebrations have been wonderful and everyone now knows who AFCB are and what a journey the club has been on. Now it is time to have a look at where we are going! I had a little sneaky look at what was the cheapest Premier League season ticket at the start of the 2014-15 season just to work out what we would be sure to be looking at for a best case scenario at AFCB in 2015-16. The honour went to guess who? Man City at £299 according to the Telegraph's review that used Sporting intelligence data. Yet, the cheapest match ticket was at Leicester City where you could pick one up for £15 - bargain! If you looked at what the teams going up put their prices up by last year the biggest rise came at Burnley that saw an increase of 47 per cent. Leicester only put theirs up by three per cent and QPR by 14 per cent.
Demand will be high to watch the Cherries next season even with the added cost.
Rumours are that you may be looking at an additional £50 on your season ticket at AFCB (that would perhaps seem a low increase considering the economics - but nothing has been announced yet), but frankly whatever the price I would hope regular season ticket holders will do everything within their power to find whatever they have to just to get their rears seated at Dean Court for what will be such a special season. The mad rush will no doubt be for the current non-season ticket holders who will want to try and join the party, but how many new season ticket holders the club can create is not a question that has been put to them yet and it may not be many of the capacity of the ground is to stay the same at 11,700.

Paying to see some of the world's best players will soon become a normal occurrence on the south coast, but it won't just be the home games that you'll want to watch. The away matches will vary in price quite wildly depending on how other teams view AFC Bournemouth for those who categorise teams and for the most part as a category 'C' team, AFCB fans may be able to consider themselves pretty fortunate compared to those playing 'A' seeded rates. 

While some matches will just be too difficult for us to get to you'll need the backup of either visiting your local pub that has Sky and BT coverage on tap or you'll just have to find a way of getting your partner to agree to a subscription. Watching Gary Neville pull apart AFCB's magnificent back four is perhaps not something I am looking forward to, although any better understanding of what either went right or wrong on the day can only give the fan confirmation of what he or she has already seen for themselves. We'd better get used to the slow mo's though and the tactics board that will examine very closely what every player has done for his 90 minutes on the pitch.

While the cost of seeing AFCB won't be as affordable as it has been for the last few seasons, it is hoped that the match day experience is even better because of it. We'll still be twirling our scarfs and shouting at the referees, but for the next 38 league games at least we will have villages in Abuja, Doha, Las Vagas, Shanghai and New Delhi all looking over your shoulder with the perfect view of the game and even goal line technology to know if a goal has been scored perhaps before you can see it. 

At the moment it is hard to comprehend quite what impact next season will have on our beloved Cherries, but I hope that there are more positives than negatives for the fans. Will it be pricey? Yes, but I hope the club will do what it can to be one of the most competitively priced season tickets. Will you be well entertained? Oh, definitely! 

By the way, the Telegraph also did a report on 22 April on expected Premier League prices for 2015-16 although AFCB were not considered at the time of the article - prices were expected to be frozen or cut for some teams.

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