Welcome to the most expensive league on the planet
Sunderland fans making the 400-mile round-trip to Coventry are being asked to cough up £37 at the gate for a ticket.
The Mackems face the Sky Blues on the August Bank Holiday after they sealed promotion from League 1 last season in the play-off final.
But fans making the trip face shelling out almost £40 to get in – nearly double the amount recommended by campaign groups.
The club has been given an allocation of 3,000 tickets by the Midlands club, which they’re expected to sell out.
More than 5,500 Sunderland fans made the 3-hour, 260-mile return trip to Preston on 12th August, with footage of the packed away stand doing the rounds on social media since.
The Football Supporters’ Association recently dubbed The Championship “the most expensive league in the world for away fans” after Premier League clubs agreed to maintain the current £30 cap on away ticket prices.
Leeds United, which had tickets capped under the agreement for the past two seasons, provoked a backlash after it upped its prices for visiting Cardiff City fans for the opening game of the 2023/24 season. The club reversed the decision after reaching a reciprocal ticketing arrangement that saw City fans charged just £24 for the Elland Road clash.
Commenting on the extortionate prices, Tom Walsh from the Wise Men Say podcast said clubs with big support in the second tier are getting “exploited by other teams” when it comes to ticket prices because they know they’ll sell out their allocation regardless.
Walsh is calling on Sunderland fans to consider boycotting the Coventry City game, saying charging £37 for a Championship game at a stadium that’s really difficult to get to via public transport – even when there’s not a rail strike – “should be the final straw”.
“Football is already unaffordable for a lot of people and prices like this will turn more and more people away from following their team away”, he added.
Other people have also expressed their dismay on social media, with Gareth Frank saying he was hoping to take his six-year-old son to the game but £62 for them both is too much to stomach.
Others have called for Sunderland to charge travelling Coventry City fans the same for the reverse fixture.
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