Leeds United chairman taking us for mugs with dynamic pricing b*llocks

· Football365

The claim of Leeds United’s chairman around dynamic ticket pricing illustrates how the Premier League isn’t bothering to hide its contempt for fans..

Leeds United are getting a lot right at the moment, which must be oddly unsettling for fans of a club more accustomed to shooting itself in the balls.

So perhaps it felt reassuring familiar when Paraag Marathe took aim at his own swingers on stage at Leaders Week London on Thursday morning.

This is what the Leeds chairman told a room full of sports business types…

> “Off the pitch, something that I’ve been thinking about is pricing tickets in the stadium doing dynamic pricing, similar to how the airline industry does it. > > “There’s probably an opportunity to do it in a way that does increase revenue, but also makes it affordable for your most hardcore fans.”

Here, we should state that last line, apparently, was delivered with a straight face rather than a wink to his knowing audience.

> “Not just to make to maximise price, but if there’s a way to truly dynamically price based on your supporters – how frequently they go and how much they transact and interact with the club – we can make it more affordable for those folks or certain seats where it’s a little bit more of a hospitality corporate area. > > “Even right now as we dynamically price, we don’t really use AI. We don’t let it make the decision for us; we just do it in tiers based on what we think.”

Dynamic pricing, then. For f’s sake…

In fairness, Marathe is only saying out loud what other chairmen will be thinking. Having observed in the last two years how the practice has gouged everyone shopping for in-demand tickets, be it for World Cup games or music gigs, it is sadly inevitable that the Premier League, an entity already eating itself, wants a piece of the dynamically-priced pie.

Where Marathe and his mates can f off and keep fing off is the suggestion that any of this will ‘make it affordable for your most hardcore fans’.

Marathe knows that Leeds, like many Premier League clubs, sell out every week. While that remains the case, with dynamic pricing, prices would only ever surge.

To a chairman under pressure to maximise revenues because the Premier League has completely lost the run of itself, of course the principle of making more from less is attractive.

But which tickets does Marathe have in mind for dynamic pricing?

Elland Road currently holds around 37,600. Of which 27,000 seats are taken by season-ticket holders and around 3,000 go to visiting clubs. Which leaves a scramble between members of at least three different tiers to lay hands on what little that is left.

Those who already pay between £40 and £75 for annual membership that guarantees nothing would suffer for dynamic pricing. If it was even viable. Which it is not.

The words of Marathe, also president of 49ers Enterprises and accustomed to surge pricing in the NFL, are ominous for genuine fans hoping that that redevelopment of Elland Road might make tickets more accessible.

By 2030, Leeds will be able to accommodate 15,000 more fans, taking the capacity to approximately 53,000. The season-ticket waiting list, though, would only be halved if all of those extra seats were intended for that purpose. Which, obviously, they are not.

Leeds, just as every other club would do, will allocate as little of that extra capacity to new season tickets as they can get away with. Premier League clubs want fewer, not more, season-ticket holders. And some are already taking action to reduce those numbers, giving no fs for the bonds they burn in the process.

Leeds’ pricing is a good illustration of why. In 2026/27, their season tickets start at £26.84 per game for adults. The cheapest individual match tickets for a Category B game are £35,50. For a category A+, the cheapest price an adult will pay is £46.50.

Those categories, by the way, represent the dynamic pricing Marathe refers to that Leeds use ‘right now’. Which is absolutely not the same thing, and cannot be used as a ramp to the real thing.

But of course the money men will prioritise the punters paying £20 more for the same seat while also far more likely to put money through the tills in the store and snack stands. And if they can squeeze those supporters even more through dynamic pricing that will only ever make tickets more expensive, of course they bloody will.

Because they know they can get away with it. Leeds, along with so many other Premier League clubs, have long-since sussed that fans – of differing sorts – will keep turning up, keep stumping up, no matter how unaffordable and inaccessible they make it for the ‘legacies’.

Anecdotally, we have all heard of long-serving fans of a variety of clubs giving up going to the match because the tipping point has been passed.

It is true, generally, the matchday experience at the highest level has never been worse. The cost; the process; the restrictions; the quality of fare and atmosphere; all along with the overwhelming feeling of being taken completely for granted means some have taken the decision to call it a day.

But nowhere near enough for clubs to give a sht. For them, every season ticket not renewed is a win.

The volume and value of those waiting to take their tickets vindicates the hard line on the traditional supporter. As much as clubs openly fawn over their fans and trade on their loyalty, they have never held those supporters in less contempt. To the point now they are not even trying to hide it.

Marathe wasn’t just spitballing on stage – dynamic pricing is coming. To Elland Road, the new Old Trafford, and every stadium where demand outstrips supply, if clubs are left to fleece unfettered.

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