Good Morning. It's Friday 9th October, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road...
Leeds fans push back as Marathe floats dynamic pricing
Leeds United fans lit up social media outlet X yesterday after Whites chairman Paraag Marathe floated airline-style ticket pricing for Elland Road. Posts questioning the plan drew replies within hours of his comments, with supporters arguing that any model built on demand would hit the people who already buy tickets every week. Marathe had told the Leaders Week conference at Stamford Bridge that the club could use artificial intelligence to vary seat prices according to how often a supporter attends and how much they spend with the club. Loyal fans, he said, could be made more affordable. Casual buyers and hospitality areas could be marked up.The comparison he reached for was the airline industry. “There’s probably an opportunity to do it in a way that does increase revenue, but also makes it affordable for your most hardcore fans,” Marathe said. He added that Leeds already prices in tiers by judgment, and that AI is not yet making those calls. The reassurance is familiar. It is also the part that has not survived contact with the box office. When Oasis put reunion tickets on sale in 2024, standing places advertised around £135 were pushed, under Ticketmaster’s “in demand” dynamic pricing, to more than £350 and in some cases near £500. Nothing about the ticket changed; Demand did.
Fans who had queued for hours were offered a product indistinguishable from what a tout would have charged, except the mark-up was now official. Football has already run the same experiment. Valencia introduced surge pricing and sold tickets from a base price that could rise as match day approached. Libertad VCF, a supporters’ group, called it speculation that treats fans as interchangeable passengers and hands seats to tourists who do not care about the result. Football Supporters Europe described dynamic pricing as blatant greed.
The Football Supporters’ Association, after the Oasis backlash, warned that the version being discussed in English football is a tool for driving prices up, not down, and that it exploits loyalty clubs already know is inelastic. The Premier League still has a partial brake. Clubs must publish ticket prices at the start of the season, and about 70 per cent of top-flight tickets are season tickets rather than walk-up sales. That has not stopped category pricing by opponent. Fulham has charged £160 for seats that were £100 against a smaller side.
Nineteen of 20 Premier League clubs raised prices before 2024-25. Concession cuts at several grounds produced protests and banners accusing clubs of exploiting loyalty while posting record revenues. What Marathe described would go further: individual prices moving with demand, frequency and spend, with software rather than a price list doing the work. American sports have used dynamic pricing for years, and several US owners have described Premier League tickets as undervalued. Elland Road currently holds 37,645, with a season-ticket waiting list reported at 32,000 when work on the West Stand began. The approved redevelopment lifts capacity to about 53,000. Those extra seats could cover just under half the current queue, though not all of them will be going to season ticket holders.
Under the squad-cost rules that replaced profit and sustainability regulations, organic ticket income is one of the cleaner ways to raise what can be spent on the pitch. A full ground that charges more on the big nights is, on a spreadsheet, an obvious win. It is a bad fit for a football club. A seat on a flight is a commodity; seat at Elland Road in January, held by someone who also goes away, is not. Once price tracks demand and “engagement,” the supporter with the least ability to walk away subsidises the fixture the club most wants to monetise. The corporate or one-off visitor pays the peak. The local who fills the ground when the team is poor is told the algorithm has recognised their loyalty, usually relative to a higher baseline than last year’s fixed price.
Marathe has also said he does not want to over-commercialise Elland Road, because the point of the expansion is a louder ground that is unpleasant for visiting teams. Dynamic pricing works against that. Football is a business; few complained when the club paid up to £45 million for James Trafford or £34.1 million for Tarik Muharemović. Something still does not sit right about the highest bidder taking a seat from a die-hard Leeds fan on the attractive dates. English football already extracts plenty from match-going supporters. The case for letting an airline pricing model into the stands has not been made by the places that have tried it.
Gruev on his comeback and Arsenal away
Ilia Gruev could be part of the squad that tries to keep Leeds unbeaten run in-tact at the Emirates. The 26-year-old has not played for the first team since April. A knee injury left him on crutches at Elland Road in May, when Leeds celebrated staying up, and it wiped out his pre-season. He missed the first four league games, made an unused substitute’s appearance against Crystal Palace, and only then got proper minutes again, with Bulgaria during the recent International break. Across four Nations League matches he played 325 minutes, captained the side, and came through a 2-0 win in Luxembourg.That is the evidence Daniel Farke now has that the midfielder can handle a game. Speaking ahead of Arsenal away, Gruev did not dress the fixture up. “We have two difficult games coming up now, against Arsenal away, then we have Manchester United at home,” he told Capital Football. “But we want to keep going and are in no mood for our run to end. We’re doing well and take it game by game, giving everything we have.” “It’s great being back and I am happy to be fit again. For me, it’s important after dealing with such a difficult injury.
"I am happy to be back and to have clocked up minutes with the national team. Let’s see what happens.” Arsenal, beaten at Brighton before the break, will not be a gentle way back. Gruev knows that. “It’s always difficult against them. On top of it, they will be brimming with motivation to get back on track. And it comes after a very long international break. So let’s see… but we approach this game with great focus. At Arsenal it’s such a tough game, we all know that.” Ethan Ampadu, Anton Stach and Ao Tanaka have carried the midfield through the five-game unbeaten run.
If Farke does throw Gruev in, Declan Rice and Myles Lewis-Skelly are the sort of opponents waiting at the Emirates. The Bulgarian’s case is that he can sit, protect the back line, and give Farke a more cautious option than the one that has been winning. “Of course, my target is to play, but the lads have been doing it really well, as the team’s amazing results reflect,” he said. “The most important thing is that the team keeps thriving.” He was also asked about Elland Road under the lights, where Leeds have made a habit of being hard to beat.
"This game is a Saturday lunchtime in north London, not a floodlit night in Yorkshire. “At Elland Road there is a magical atmosphere under the floodlights,” he said. “The floodlights do something with us… and we want to exploit the positive atmosphere Elland Road generates at night. "We want to keep racking up the points as we’ve been doing until now. But also during the day we can hold our own and, when all is said and done, nothing is impossible in football. That includes the game against Arsenal.”
Gruev is the only Bulgarian in the Premier League, and a reference point for teammates who mostly play at home. After months out, he is treating the next step the same way. “I hope to help the team and pass on as much as I can thanks to the experience I have from the Premier League,” he said. “I know that the lads watch a lot of Premier League, so I hope I can give them something. I hope I can continue like this.”
