Price tag - Azkals still expensive compared to other football events
Following part one of a comparison of Philippine Football ticket prices
with the rest of Asia, it became clear that during the Challenge Cup
Qualifiers, the Philippines was by far the most expensive place to watch
a football match. Even the P500 white bleacher ticket were nearly the
same price as the most expensive tickets of the other four hosts,
Myanmar, Laos, Kyrgyzstan, and Nepal, combined.
[Related: Is the price right? Azkals tickets most expensive among Challenge Cup Qualification groups]There
are a lot of issues to flesh out in this discussion, the first of which
is to see whether or not the Challenge Cup Qualifiers was an isolated
case. Comparisons quickly show, however, that it wasn’t.
A price comparison of the Suzuki Cup semifinalsOf
the other semifinalists, Malaysia was the defending champion, while
Singapore and Thailand, with three titles each, were battling it out to
decide which was the most successful side in Southeast Asia.
The
Philippines were therefore the underdogs once again, with two semifinal
appearances as their best finishes. But in ticket prices, they were the
most expensive by far.
Despite having a much lower
purchasing power than Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, in terms of how
expensive the same product is across those countries and currencies,
the best seats in the Rizal Memorial Stadium were between five and seven
times the price of the most expensive tickets in the other three
countries.
Country | Malaysia | Philippines | Singapore | Thailand | Stadium | Bukit Jalil National Stadium | Rizal Memorial Stadium | Jalan Besar Stadium | Supachalasai Stadium | Attendance (capacity) | 90,000 (100,000 capacity) | 12,500 (12,500 capacity) | 7,500 (7,500 capacity) | 19,700 (19,700 capacity) | Ticket prices | RM 40 (P528) per adult RM 10 (P132) per child | Bleachers: P300 and P400 Grandstand: P1000, P2000 and P3000 | S$10 (P329) and S$18 (P592) | 100 Baht (P139) 200 Baht (P279) 300 Baht (P418) |
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With tickets sold out in all four venues for games at the same stage of
the same competition, this is the most level comparison of ticket prices
possible. And with by far the worst football infrastructure of the four
nations, the Philippines’ tickets were by far the most expensive.
And
this comparison holds for even the Suzuki Cup Final. The most expensive
tickets for both legs of the 2012 Suzuki Cup Final were S$22 (P722) and
standard tickets were S$12 (P395). The Philippines’ Grandstand tickets
for the semifinal, and even the Challenge Cup Qualifiers, were between
1/3 and four times more expensive than Suzuki Cup Final tickets.
Singapore versus Philippines and LA Galaxy price comparisonsAnother
good comparison point is the home-and-away series of friendly matches
between the Philippines and Singapore. Singapore hosted the Philippines
in the Jurong West Sports Complex on September 7, 2012, before the
Philippines hosted Singapore in the Cebu City Sports Complex on November
15 two months later.
Country | Singapore | Philippines | Stadium | Jurong West Sports Complex | Cebu City Sports Complex | Attendance (capacity) | 2,956 (3,200) | 7,000 (7,000) | Ticket prices | S$10 (P329) for adult S$2 (P66) for a student/senior citizen | P200, P400, P600, P800 and P2,000 VIP ticket |
|
As shown above, the best view in the Philippines was six times the price
of tickets in Singapore. Singapore also included large concessions for
students to promote the game among the youth.
With
capacity crowds, the same national teams involved, and only a two-month
gap between the games, there is little difference between the matches.
Yet the Philippines charged between three and six times the amount
Singapore did for the same tickets to watch the same teams.
In
a similar comparison, when the Philippines organized an exhibition game
with LA Galaxy at the end of 2011, they were looking to raise the
profile of football by bringing in superstars like Robbie Keane, Landon
Donovan, and possibly the most famous footballer in the world, David
Beckham, to Manila. It was an admirable move and lots of people worked
hard to bring the team over.
When ticket prices were
released though, there were many complaints as the minimum price of
P2,000 and maximum of P15,500 were the highest Southeast Asia may have
ever seen. As further comparison, in Indonesia in the same tour, fans
could see the LA Galaxy for between $7-$200 (P286-P8,161). In other
words, the cheapest ticket in the Philippines was almost ten times more
expensive than in Indonesia.
With an 88,000 capacity
stadium, Indonesia had the infrastructure to charge lower prices.
However Indonesia also overpriced their tickets as only 20,000 turned up
to watch the Galaxy, a quarter of the capacity of a stadium normally
full in games against regional rivals. And for the Philippines, with
tickets sales exceptionally slow in the build-up to the game, the PFF
reduced ticket prices by 35 percent and were still way short of filling
the 12,500 capacity Rizal Memorial Stadium for a match in which P1
million was charged by the Philippine Sports Commission to rent the
stadium.
What can fans get for the price of a Challenge Cup Qualifying ticket?As
a comparison, the P2,500 some fans paid for tickets to the Rizal
Memorial Stadium for Challenge Cup Qualifiers could have gotten them
into matches between Japan and Australia, as the best teams in the AFC,
and even into the Bernabeu Stadium to see the most-watched match in
world football, el Classico.
Japan and Australia are
well ahead of most of Asia on the football field, sitting at the top of
the Asian Football Confederation in first and second respectively. Drawn
in the same group for the fourth round of World Cup Qualifiers, two
stages ahead of the furthest point the Philippines has ever reached in
the world’s most prestigious international tournament, it presents an
interesting clash between Japan, currently 26th in the world, and
Australia, 39th.
The ticket prices for the 1-1 draw in
Australia last June were set at AUS$40 for Category C tickets (P1,697),
AUS$65 (P2,758) for Category B, and AUS$95 (P4,031) for Category A
tickets, with half-price tickets for students and senior citizens.
In
fact fans could have watched Australia versus Japan and bought the most
expensive ticket in the other four Challenge Cup Qualification groups
for the same price as the Philippines’ lower center Grandstand tickets
against Turkmenistan, and still have P290 left over for dinner.
Meanwhile
the el Classico, the Real Madrid versus Barcelona clash, is arguably
the best football match in the world, which sees the best two
footballers in the world go head-to-head, in Lionel Messi and Cristiano
Ronaldo. Ticket prices began at 20 Euros (P1049) for members and 40
Euros (P2098) for non-members, while the Philippines charged P1,000 and
P2,000-2,500 for Grandstand tickets in the Challenge Cup Qualifiers.
The Philippines losing money on international matchesSome
in the Azkals’ management are doing the best they can with what they
have. In the previous article, manager Dan Palami was quoted as saying
that on average the Philippines loses around P3 million when hosting
international games.
That’s a huge amount of money and
given that hosts are supposed to make money back from ticket revenue,
the Philippines clearly have costs the other countries don’t. One of the
reasons is that starting with just two players based in the United
Football League in their starting eleven, the Philippines flew over ten
players from Europe for the squad.
Flights add up, and
it’s far from likely those players were flying economy. In addition,
there are fees to clubs to release players and the salaries and
substantial bonuses of players from the contracts revealed during the
Younghusband saga from the Peace Cup.
Ultimately, the
management refused the Younghusbands’ financial demands but it does
reveal that the Azkals are getting paid to play for the country, and
getting paid well. The Philippines’ expenditure for games runs well
above other nations’ costs before hosting other teams.
By
comparison, seven of the 19 countries who participated in the Challenge
Cup had no players based outside their domestic leagues competing,
while most of the rest had a handful of players based within their
region. Turkmenistan, for example, brought in four players from other
countries in the Middle East.
Only Afghanistan had more
foreign-based players than the Azkals, and they’re abroad more for
security than anything else, but their fourteen players from different
countries, including five from Germany, are all based in the lower
tiers. The foreign-based Azkals are in the top leagues abroad meanwhile,
and with the higher quality comes a higher cost of bringing the players
over.
Fans paying for the lack of infrastructureExtremely
impressive progress on the pitch has been made under manager Dan Palami
and coach Michael Weiss’ watch. However the off-the-pitch management
seems to be expecting the fans to pay top-rate for tickets to see a team
which isn't yet the best in Southeast Asia yet, let alone further
afield.
More respectable ticket prices will of course
see higher attendance numbers for the Azkals’ matches, and there is the
potential for large attendances in the Philippines. After the team’s
revival in 2010, full-capacity crowds against Mongolia in Bacolod, and
Sri Lanka and Kuwait in Manila, for the first three home games of 2011,
partly attest to that.
But to get back to those crowds
and continue expanding, the infrastructure must come first, because if
Philippine tickets remain far out of proportion with the rest of the
region, attendance will continue to fall.
Financial
sustainability is possible for Philippine football should these, and
similar problems in the infrastructure, be ironed out. And the future of
football in this country could be very bright given results on the
pitch. Yet, ticket prices for the Philippines reflect similar prices
fans pay to see the best in Asia, sometimes the best in the world, and
that’s something that must change for the Azkals to progress
sustainably.
- AMD, GMA News
www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/302947/sports/opinion/price-tag-azkals-still-expensive-compared-to-other-football-events