Ask the Premier League who it serves and you will get a polished answer about a global audience, world-class football and record investment. Ask the people queuing at the turnstiles at 7.45 on a wet Monday night and you will get a shorter, sharper one. The league is the most watched in the world, and it has never been richer. The question worth asking is whether the people who made it worth watching are still near the front of the queue.
The fixture list is written for the cameras
Anyone who has followed a team away from home knows the feeling. You book trains for a Saturday at three, and a few weeks later the game moves to a Sunday lunchtime or a Monday night because a broadcaster has picked it. Your hotel is non-refundable. The last train home leaves before the final whistle. The match goes ahead, the pictures look great on television, and you are sleeping in a car park in the Midlands.
Television money is not the villain in itself. It pays wages, funds facilities and trickles down, imperfectly, through the pyramid. But the balance has tipped. Kick-off times are announced with too little notice, and they are chosen with almost no thought for the supporters who have to get there and back. Liverpool and Everton fans travelling to the south coast for an evening kick-off know exactly how that feels.
A simple fix would be to confirm televised fixtures earlier and stick to them, and to give real weight to travel times when picking evening games for travelling supporters. None of that costs the league a penny.
Prices that only go one way
Every summer, the same pattern. A few pounds on a season ticket here, a new “category” of match there, hospitality packages swallowing seats that used to be ordinary. Clubs point to rising costs. Fans point to the broadcast deals and ask where all that money goes.
Supporters on Merseyside have shown what happens when people push back. In 2016 thousands of Liverpool fans walked out of Anfield on 77 minutes in protest at plans for a £77 ticket, and the club backed down within days. That same year, Premier League clubs agreed to cap away tickets at £30, after years of campaigning by fan groups. Both were reminders that the people in the stands still have leverage when they act together.
A ground can be sold out and still feel empty if the people who built its noise can no longer afford to get in.
Who gets to be in the ground
There is nothing wrong with a supporter from Oslo or Kuala Lumpur coming to Anfield or the new Everton stadium. Plenty of them are as devoted as anyone born in L4. The problem is when the system is designed to favour the occasional visitor who will pay more over the local lad who has been going for twenty years.
Ballots, membership schemes and loyalty points have made tickets harder to get for ordinary people. Young adults are the hardest hit. Many grew up going with their parents and then find, at eighteen or twenty, that the price and the scramble for tickets shut them out. A league that cannot bring the next generation through its turnstiles is storing up trouble, however healthy the broadcast numbers look.
What fans actually want
Talk to supporters of either Merseyside club and you hear the same list. It is not radical:
- Fair prices, frozen where possible, with proper concessions for young adults and older fans.
- Earlier, fixed kick-off times that take travel into account.
- A real voice in decisions about ticketing, stadium changes and club ownership.
- Protection for the club’s identity: the name, the colours, the ground and the competition it plays in.
That last point is not theoretical. When the European Super League was announced in 2021, fans of every club involved, Liverpool among them, made it clear within hours that they would not accept it. The plan collapsed in a couple of days. It was the clearest proof in years that supporters are not just customers.
Regulation and the long view
The arrival of an independent football regulator in England is supposed to give fans more protection, particularly over ownership and the heritage of clubs. Whether it works will depend on how it uses its powers once the headlines have moved on. Supporters have heard promises before.
Some changes have already made a difference. Safe standing areas have returned to top-flight grounds after decades, and they have been a success where clubs have embraced them. Fan advisory boards now exist at every Premier League club. These are small steps, but they came about because people kept asking.
The view from the stands
None of this is a call to turn the clock back. Most of us like a modern ground, a working toilet and a decent pie. Plenty of us enjoy watching the other games on television. But the product the league sells abroad – the noise, the colour, the sense that it matters – is made by the people who turn up every week. If they are priced out or worn down, the pictures will look a lot less impressive.
If you are travelling to Merseyside for a game, our local’s guide for visiting fans has tips on getting about and avoiding the worst of the matchday rush.