Just browsing these Harry Styles VIP ticket packages for Wembley (they start at £333.45 for the Disco Package and escalate to £725.45 for the Together Package), and inevitably reflecting: what an absolute bargain Premier League football is these days.
Last weekend, for instance, I was ringside at Stamford Bridge for Paul Tierney v the Chelsea team huddle. You’ll have seen this. Chelsea have started doing their pre-match huddle over the centre spot, rather than in their own half like everybody else. No idea why. Perhaps to create the world’s most passive-aggressive haka. Maybe to harness the energy from the ley lines.
But this time, the referee determined that he had immutable duties in that space with regard to guaranteeing “respect for the match ball”. Who knew? It was as if Tierney had said to Chelsea: “I’ll see your woo woo, and I’ll raise it by an almost inconceivable multiple with my own woo woo, freshly minted for the occasion.”
Consequently an entirely resistible force met a completely movable object, producing a soft collision enjoyed everywhere: a team huddle with a referee poking out of the top of it. The price to me of a seat at this entertainment? £55. An utter steal, surely.
Contrast those premium ticket holders for Styles, whose costly upgrades secure a wan-looking list of privileges including a “photo opportunity in front of the VIP backdrop”. Note: not a photo opportunity with Harry; a photo opportunity with a board.
Sometimes you wonder whether the gap is closing before our eyes between an A-list stadium gig and famously under-powered UK experiences like the New Forest Lapland of 2008, a “winter wonderland” felt by unhappy customers to lack both winter and wonder, and whose organisers actually went to prison.
The truth is, for not far north of the price of one Together Package at Wembley, I get an ENTIRE SEASON of backstage access at Chelsea. Well, kind of. The staircase down which my corner of the ground exits puts us briefly in the service tunnel with the lawn mowers. Sometimes on your way out you pass an actual ball-person down there, and certainly ground staff getting ready to go in. I can’t imagine they would refuse me a photo opportunity in front of them if I needed one, and at no extra charge.
And on the subject of extra charges, Ticketmaster, the concert tickets portal, is not above demanding a £17 “service charge” and a £4 “administration fee”. £21 to process a single digital transaction? No wonder Ticketmaster’s company logo is a big scalping knife. Wait, what? That’s actually a lower case “t” in an italic font? My mistake.
Again, by contrast, football club practices in this area seem admirably pure. A £35 ticket bought online last week for Chelsea’s upcoming FA Cup quarter-final against Port Vale incurred an additional charge of £1. Which is obviously a rip-off too, but at least it’s a small one. And, as has been made clear in recent days, this being Chelsea, it all goes to good causes, such as bungs to secure the services of Eden Hazard. Or it used to, anyway. These days it mostly seems to go towards overpriced youngsters who are prone to panic when the heat is on, but whatever.
Look, I’m not naive. I know that monetising the experience is increasingly football’s modus, too. Already at Chelsea, a small party of premium ticket holders are guided across the pitch before kick-off, prior to taking up “exclusive” seats directly behind the home dugout – just about the worst place to watch the game from, but undeniably the best place to watch a disgruntled Cole Palmer theatrically resume his seat following substitution.
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And I guess it won’t be long before a few hundred quid secures some of those people a guest slot in that team huddle. Or maybe the club will offer a “Tierney package”, allowing you to stand bang in the middle of it with your head sticking out, like someone in a novelty ballet costume. And fair enough: as Tierney proved, it’s quite the photo op.
But in the meantime, from the cheap seats, let’s at least agree that, while this kind of stuff is going on, the game of football remains value for money.
Photography by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC