Spiralling costs rip up notion of sport as a communal force for good

Last week the club quietly increased its match-day ticket prices by around 20%: more in some areas, less in others

RISING PRICES: Ticket prices at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will increase. File pic: PA

Hold your nerve. Stick to the plan. We’re all in this together. Your rent is going through the roof and your bills are turning red, and your local supermarket has started putting security tags on the cheese, but the sunlit uplands are at hand. Desperate parents are stealing baby formula and corporate profit margins are fattening and there seem to be a lot more mattresses on the street these days, but trust the process. And in the meantime, try to avoid asking for a pay rise, buying branded goods or watching live sport.

Full disclosure: I’m probably not the best person to be writing about the rising cost of attending sport in this country. I get to do it for free. It’s the most pathetic excuse for a job yet invented. Likewise, among the sports media as a whole, ticket prices have always been something of a blind spot: a war we so rarely have to fight, a huge segment of the sporting experience to which, with a cheery wave of a lanyard, we remain largely oblivious. But really it’s time somebody started kicking up a fuss, because it’s getting ridiculous out there.