Limiting ticket prices for aways fans in Spain a positive move but more needs to be done

Spain is a football watching country, but the culture of travelling away to watch your team doesn’t compare to many other European countries. While German clubs regularly take 10,000 or even more fans to away games and Premier League teams regularly sell all 3,000 allocated tickets for theirs, followings in Spain are small, with some exceptions.

There are several reasons for this. Spain is a big country. It’s 1,000 kilometres and over 10 hours by road from Barcelona on its northeastern coast to to Seville in the southwest. This has hindered a culture of dedicated away trips and Spain’s transport infrastructure didn’t historically aid faster cross-country travel as it does now.

Fans, especially away fans, have long been an afterthought, too, with kick-off times for matches changed later than in neighbouring countries and games routinely played late on a Sunday night. That doesn’t make it easy to get home when you may have work in the morning. There’s long been another problem: cost. Despite average wages being lower than in England or Germany, ticket prices are often far more expensive.

Fans attending European games in Spain were shocked to see tickets on sale for around €100. Spanish clubs just shrugged their shoulders as if to say, ‘that’s how it is here’. The five most expensive match tickets in Manchester United’s history, excluding finals, have all been for games in Spain. Fans paid as much as €119 to watch United at Barcelona’s Camp Nou in 2019. Uefa, European football's governing body, pressured Spanish clubs to lower prices for away fans for European games. They did. Now, after speaking to fans groups, Champions League tickets for away fans must not exceed €70 from this season, €45 in the Europa League and €25 in