The Scottish football matchday experience

A slight change of tack this time, after the highs and lows of the first two games of the season I attended at Tannadice and Dingwall. As ever, thank you to all who take the time to read my ramblings, it is greatly appreciated.

In this latest piece, I’ll be looking at the general ‘matchday experience’ that someone who is lucky enough to travel both home and away to support their club endures, and how we as a nation could work to improve things.

The game belongs to the loyal supporters of clubs at all levels, and they should always be at the forefront of thought when decisions that impact them are being made. 

Ticketing issues

I would say one of the major gripes within the game is the cost associated with a day out at the football nowadays.

I don’t think it would be unfair to say that the majority of the people who we see across the terraces and stands don’t have a plethora of spare cash to throw around at overpriced tickets. The growth of IPTV and other such methods of watching live football online make it slightly easier for those who are on the fence to err on the side of staying home than heading down to whatever their choice of stadium would be.

A reduction in price of even a fiver might have been enough for such individuals to have made a different decision.

In the Premiership, where we see the majority of supporters turning out every week, it is becoming far too common to see tickets topping £30. In my experience, the two Old Firm clubs, alongside Hearts, are the most expensive to get a matchday ticket, with prices approaching 40 quid in some instances.

I’ll back our game to the hilt but there is no chance tickets should be anywhere near that amount.

I understand the argument that ticket prices need to be set so that season tickets represent a worthwhile saving and clearly, season ticket sales make up a large part of our clubs’ annual budgets. 

However, I, and a lot of fellow supporters I know, would buy season tickets regardless of the single ticket price. So, surely we can find a happy medium where season tickets are still worthwhile for the regularly attending fans, whilst not asking people to take out mortgages if they want to go game by game?

A look around a few of the lower league club websites shows average prices at or just below the £20 mark, which seems a bit more reasonable. 

In theory, the top flight provides a better level of product so can justifiably have it’s price point slightly above that, but to be as much above that as it is?

I’ll leave that one up to you.


Another gripe I know people have that appears to have reared its head recently, is the restriction of ability to buy tickets on matchday.

I have seen quite a few clubs telling supporters, home and away, that they need to buy tickets in advance of the day the game is taking place. For the life of me, I cannot make head nor tail of this method of thinking.

Surely it is just doing our clubs out of much needed finances?

I’m not anticipating thousands turning up on the day, but surely we can make provisions for those who are awaiting news on work / personal arrangements and won’t find out for sure until the Saturday morning.

Seems like an unnecessary evil to me.

In the past few seasons, statistics have been made available showing how many people attend football games per capita. Scotland regularly tops out this metric, showing just how important match-going fans are to the health of our game as a whole.

They are the main source of finance for the vast majority of clubs in this country and deserve to be treated as such.

So, clearly there is an undoubted ongoing appetite for live football. It is down to the clubs to ensure loyal fans are rewarded and conditions are made as attractive to bring a new generation of fans through the turnstiles. 

Getting tickets right would be a good place to start.

Transport links (or lack of)

Wasn't in jail here... just at The Mallard

Saying we’re a bit understocked in terms of matchday infrastructure would be just a bit of an understatement.

In the majority of cities and towns across the country which are the home to our football clubs, there’s a real lack of transport options for travelling fans to get to games that aren’t either by car or by supporters bus.

Having been to see Hertha Berlin in the Bundesliga and been thoroughly impressed by the 20 euro ticket price for starters, then to later learn that it got you on the train to the stadium as well.

Absolutely delighted.

However, amongst this delirium I do remember thinking how far removed it seemed from the game back home.

Games in Dundee, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Perth especially immediately sprang to mind in terms of being pretty inaccessible for supporters travelling on trains.

There are tens of thousands of fans attending games in these cities over the course of a weekend, so it’s fair to assume that a good number of these - both home and away - will be travelling up / down / across on public transport.

So, would it be too much to ask for local authorities / clubs to arrange a few shuttle buses from transport hubs out to the ground to save fans from having to get taxis etc? And save on congestion around the ground from people forced to drive through because of the location of stadiums?

The answer is probably yes, but just thought I’d try…

No real ‘matchday experience’

Before I get going here, I’m certainly not suggesting we go full NFL - I just feel that our clubs as a collective could make an effort to make matchday more than just rock up at 2.55pm and depart as soon as the game’s over.

I understand there are barriers to this, significantly the anti alcohol laws because of a fight involving two clubs about 300 years ago.

There are also many individuals who have their own set routines they’ve had for years if not decades - leave the house at a set time, meet at the pub, head to the game, head back to the pub for a dissection of the game, up the road via the chippy.

They might not be the target market.

But for some of our bigger clubs - I know some have some form of this going already - in my mind it would make perfect sense to set up some arrangement to have fans down to the ground earlier and allow them to get a drink and some food. Have a couple of screens set so the lunchtime kick off can be shown and have a beat the goalie or something for the younger ones.

If done properly, this could turn into a real money spinner for our clubs as they’d be able to keep all the takings, and this would more than cover the cost of set up and upkeep of such an area.

As with all things, no doubt there would be some red tape to beat, but ideas such as this would help pull our game kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Away days

We all love away days.

As someone who is lucky enough to get the chance to travel to the majority of away games through a season, from Dumfries to Dingwall, I have had the opportunity to experience a fair number of stadia from all different levels of the game.

In my experience, at some grounds, not all, away fans can be treated as an afterthought - even after shelling out sometimes £30 plus on tickets then trains etc as well.

All that time, money and effort to be herded like cattle into a small corner of the ground with a not great view of the product you’ve paid to see.

In any other walk of life you’d be asking for your money back and leaving a less than complimentary Tripadvisor review.

But it’s football so we just accept it, and even worse, keep coming back for more!

It’s pretty well documented that the Glasgow two are the worst for in-stadium experience as an away fan.

I get it, there’s not a lot of appetite for fans of visiting clubs to travel away to these grounds and they have a lot of season ticket holders to accommodate. 

But the current setup is pretty dire from an experience point of view - and then your team usually gets beat so I can understand the majority opting to stay away.

Then you get stuck away in the corner with a sub standard view of proceedings.

Not far off 40 quid for the pleasure.

But you’ll see me there this season. Sigh.

Something that grinds my gears when it comes to our game is how constantly underprepared clubs seem to be to deal with bigger away attendances.

We discussed earlier on the issue of not being able to buy tickets on the day. Surely a big reason from the clubs for doing this is so they can know numbers in advance and plan accordingly. So why, oh why, do so many clubs seem underprepared for the numbers that are turning up at the away end?

In my experience, Den’s Park and Easter Road especially are the two worst for this. So many times you turn up and it’s just a shambles.

Stewards don’t have a clue and totally just bury their head in the sand and this just adds fuel to the fire.

Surely if you know you’re hosting a decent sized away support, just open up a couple extra turnstiles? It wouldn’t kill you.

Then after all that debacle, you’ve finally fought your way into the ground. Pie and a juice to head in with.

Sold out before kick off.

And the banned word (or three)…. VAR

Don’t worry, I’ll keep the VAR chat brief because literally everyone is bored to tears with it and its many failings have been discussed endlessly.

In my opinion, in its current form it’s totally unworkable. Supporters in the ground are left totally in the dark as to what’s happening and it just causes so much frustration for everyone.

The fact the clubs need to stump up for it is ridiculous. 

For me, if we were going to bring in any sort of technology, it should’ve been the goal line kind before anything else.

Scottish football’s main USP’s are its passion, all blood and thunder, but also good humour at the same time.

VAR adversely impacts all three of these aspects and totally detracts from the game as a spectacle.

We were all told that VAR was not here to ‘re-referee’ the game. So why are we consistently seeing a team of officials in an office somewhere pore over a clip in (sometimes pretty poor quality) ultra slow motion replays. That sounds like re-refereeing to me.

I’m definitely not totally anti-VAR. We have seen instances when it has worked as it should and it’s dealt with speedily. That sort of system I am totally on board with. 

However, unfortunately, up here we just do not have the resources that we see down south of 27 different angles in ultra HD and it can just become a bit of a farce.

A system that was brought in to remove some levels of controversy, because of course you’d never lose it all up here (and that’s a good thing) has, for me, actually made it worse and has a negative impact on fan experience.

As we discussed at the top of this piece, fans are the most important thing that football in this country has and anything that might turn people off should be viewed dimly.