It seems that people are always looking to find value for money, and never more so than in tough economic times. Football's no different, so to help us look for value in football from a supporter's perspective, I dug up some interesting data from Stadionwelt.de, the very helpful portal with stadium-related statistics. Turns out, the good folks at Stadionwelt (which translates to "stadium world"), put together a set of numbers that allow us to calculate how much fans have to shell out to see their team score a goal or two. How much, you may be asking yourself, does it cost to see a goal?
While Bundesliga ticket prices are generally quite affordable for the average fan, there is still quite abit of league-wide variation in how much you can expect to shell out to see what some think is the best league in the world. On average, Hamburg and Cologne matches are most expensive, with average single tickets priced at €38.75 and €38.50, respectively, while Mainz and Frankfurt (€24.75 and €24.25, respectively, are a real bargain in comparison). So, given this variation, and given variation in teams' scoring prowess, how much does it cost fans to witness a goal when they go to the stadium? Below, there's first the price of a goal - calculated as by the average ticket price per match (in euros) times the number of games played in the stadium divided by the number of goals scored. So it's simply the relationship between the average ticket price in a club's stadium and the number of goals those in attendance got to see. To make things easy to digest, I then put these numbers in a bar chart, ranking "goal prices" from most expensive (worst value) to least expensive (best value. Here's what you get.
Cologne's truly dedicated fans are willing to pay the most to see the occasional goal. In Cologne you have to pay almost 35 euros to see your team score. And the difference to second most expensive Moenchengladbach - another club with long-suffering fans, especially this season - is a cool €10. Contrast that with Hoffenheim, Hannover, Kaiserslautern, Dortmund, Leverkusen, Bremen, and Wolfsburg, all of which serve up a goal for only about €15 a piece. These numbers seem to suggest that value for money is better when fans go to see good teams play.
But is it also the case that good teams provide equally good value for money, and that bad home teams' goals are equally expensive? The quick answer is no. Take a look at a simple scatterplot of the total number of goals scored by home teams and the average ticket price in that stadium (for the technical geeks among you, I've superimposed a regression line).
There is a positive correlation between total goals scored by the home team and average ticket prices, as shown by the regression line (the Pearson correlation is a moderate and positive .29). So, when you pay more, you also see more goals. Moreover, this trend line would be much steeper, and the correlation therefore much stronger, if we eliminated the "expensive" but underperforming 1.FC Koeln (whereas, with M'Gladbach you get what you pay for).
But the more interesting point about the pattern of data shown in the graph is to see which teams over- or under-perform relative to ticket prices. To make this more obvious, I have labeled a few of the teams. Teams below the regression line are more expensive than the average - you have to pay more to see goals - and teams above the regression line are a bargain - you see more goals than you pay for league-wide. As you can see, Cologne is truly woeful - way below the regression line - and their fans are paying through the nose to see their team score. But even Frankfurt with its relatively affordable ticket prices isn't scoring as much as they should, given what they charge. In contrast, Bayern and Stuttgart (despite the former's relatively mediocre season and the latter's terrible season) are giving their fans their money's worth, outperforming the league in goals scored relative to average single-day ticket prices. But perhaps the best value for money is Schalke 04 in the upper left corner of the graph: at Schalke, you pay some of the lowest prices, but you get to see more goals. Now, that's value for money.*
* These data do not show the relationship between goals and season ticket prices. I may get to that in a future post.
