Arsenal to create football history by charging landmark price for match-day seat

By Derek Hunter for MailOnline

Arsenal may have been founded as a team for factory staff and featured as an iconic working-class club in the film of Nick Hornby's best-seller Fever Pitch, but they are about to take another giant step away from their traditional, core support.



The cost of an 'ordinary' seat for a Premier League game at the Emirates Stadium in the New Year is poised to break the £100 barrier - which would make them the most expensive non-hospitality seats in the history of English football. It will also push ticket prices into a frightening new era.

Rising prices: Cost of watching Arsenal is going up

Even after years of becoming accustomed to the top flight's 'prawn sandwich brigade', the struggle of ordinary fans to pay for admission can only get harder once the landmark price has been reached as a result of the planned rise of VAT to 20 per cent on January 4.



Arsenal could choose to absorb the tax rise and not pass it on to fans, but there has been no indication yet that supporters will be spared the hike.



The club's website booking page warns: 'Please note that, with the VAT increase due in January 2011, our matchday ticket prices will be subject to change.'



Malcolm Clarke, chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation, said: 'A £100 ticket in the present climate is ridiculous. It is proof that football is not living in the same world as the rest of us.

'The game has more money going into it than ever before and it is not helping fans. Football is no longer a game that is readily accessible to all sections of the community.'



The Premier League has become a rich man's playground in recent years, with foreign owners ploughing money in at the top and fans footing a share of the bill at the bottom.



The English game has changed a great deal since standing was banned at top-flight stadia in 1994.



But the image of swathes of working-class fans on Highbury's North Bank in the 1997 film Fever Pitch seems a world away from Arsenal's potential new level of pricing, which would come into effect from the home game against Manchester City on January 5.



Grounds for concern: Emirates will have the priciest 'ordinary' ticket in English football

A £100 ticket would make watching Arsenal 11 times more expensive than following Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund. The German team charge just £9 for their cheapest seat.



'Prices have risen way beyond the rate of inflation, and the bigger clubs have gone the furthest over the last decade,' added Clarke.



The most expensive normal seats at the Emirates Stadium - in the centre of the upper tier for 'category A' games against popular opponents - are £94 per person, plus a booking fee of up to £2.30 and £2.20 postage.



That makes £98.50 for a typical purchase. But, with VAT rising from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent, that ticket would break the £100 barrier for the first time.



No club can afford to charge such prices throughout their grounds and stay busy, and Arsenal have a wide range of prices, from £48 to £94 for 'Category A' games against top opposition such as Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham.



It costs from £33 to £66 for Premier League games against lesser sides but the bill for a family of four could still top their weekly food shopping bill.



Arsenal, who are repaying the debt from building the £390million stadium, are already the most expensive club to watch on their own ground in Britain by some margin, and a recession is not perhaps the ideal time to be breaking the £100 barrier.



Season ticket-holder and author Tom Watt said: 'It does seem an extraordinary amount of money.

'If somebody can afford to pay that fair play to them but, while people complain about a lot of things at Arsenal, value for money is not one of them.'



Arsenal's cheapest adult season ticket for 2010-11 cost £893, while their most expensive 'ordinary' season ticket, which has no hospitality, was £1,825. Liverpool were the next most expensive for 2010-11 at £680, followed by Tottenham (£650), West Ham (£585) and Chelsea (£550).



Blackburn had the cheapest adult season ticket at £224 - just over twice the cost of a single highend ticket at the Emirates.



The club with the next most expensive single ticket price in England is Tottenham, where the most expensive 'normal' seat is £76 per game, which will increase to £78 when VAT rises in January, according to Spurs' official website.



The most expensive ordinary seat at Chelsea costs £73, and at Manchester United just £49.



