I’d really hoped that Sheffield Wednesday would scrap ticket categories

It’s that time of year again when we find out how much fans who haven’t bought a season ticket will have to pay to watch Sheffield Wednesday…

On the plus side, Arise have made them cheaper than Dejphon Chansiri, and they’ve reduced the amount of categories down to three – A, B and C. The downside, though, is that – in my opinion – the top tier prices are still too expensive, and honestly, I’d prefer they’d just got rid of categories altogether.

The club will say that you can mitigate the high prices by buying a season ticket or an ‘All Wednesday’ membership, and that’s all well and good – but £46 for a League One fixture is far too much money.

For balance, £34 for a Cat A game on the Kop means that they’ll never be higher than that, and £27 for Cat C in the same stand isn’t a bad price in my eyes. In 2018/19 - in the Championship - a Cat G game was £20 wherever you sat, for instance.

Wednesday will point to the fact that they’ve sold over 24,000 season tickets, and that there’s effectively a 10% decrease across season tickets, shirts and memberships. There’s also the fact that the new owners have spent £6m over the summer in order to get Hillsborough and the training ground at Middlewood Road to a standard closer to where they should be.

Category C and Category B prices (Bromley and Bradford)

It’ll be interesting to see where games fall this season, too. If there are a lot of Cat A clashes, for instance, then grievances over prices will – rightly – increase. It wouldn’t take long for a membership to pay for itself, but that’s also sort of beyond the point. Cat B on the Kop, I believe, will be around the £30 mark.

I do think that £34 for a ticket in the away end is too much for Bradford City fans to be paying, absolutely… Especially for a game that’s on Sky. Many Championship teams are charging less.

But I also think there will be 30,000+ at that game regardless, and sadly, I also think it’s going to be a price similar to that which Wednesdayites will be paying often this season as well – they’re paying £30 at Leyton Orient, and sold it out.

Personally I don’t think any fan in League One should be paying more than £30 for a ticket. Leicester City have tickets at almost £50 for their Cat A matches, whereas Reading’s highest price is £31 and they’ve got no categories at all – that’s pretty much ideal if you ask me.

It’s great that prices are down across the board, Arise deserve credit for that. The only issue is that they were exorbitant to begin with, so even with a decrease the highest prices still feel too much. Hopefully Cat A is saved for very special occasions.

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