Paraag Marathe caused a bit of anxiety last week when he spoke about the possibility of introducing ‘dynamic pricing’. But in the face of opposition from the Supporters Trust, the club have since said there are no plans to use this pricing model just yet.

Marathe was speaking at the sports business summit ‘Leaders Week London’, when he said that he had been thinking about how to use ‘dynamic pricing’ for Leeds home matches, with the focus on making prices more affordable for those supporters who attend most frequently.

Dynamic pricing is the system that we’ve all come to know and loathe when it comes to paying for Hotels, Taxis, Train or Plane tickets. Prices rise and fall with demand, so you end up paying a lot more at the most popular times. And obviously if it was applied to football we’d be paying much higher prices if we managed to nab one of the last remaining tickets for a big game, just before it sells out.

City AM reported Marathe’s comments at the conference in more detail. “There’s probably an opportunity to do it in a way that does increase revenue, but also makes it affordable for your most hardcore fans. Off the pitch, something I’ve been thinking about is pricing tickets in the stadium, doing dynamic pricing, similar to how the airline industry does it”.

“Not just to maximise price, but if there’s a way to truly dynamically price based on your supporters — how frequently they go and how much they transact and interact with the club — we can make it more affordable for those folks or certain seats where it’s a little bit more of a hospitality corporate area.”

Clubs have been using a form of demand-led pricing for years, with different categories of matches ensuring that ticket prices are higher for bigger games, though the same price applies to all tickets, regardless of when they were bought. And In 2012, Cardiff City, Derby County and Bristol City started to ramp this up with ‘dynamic pricing’ systems, but soon gave up on the idea.

Surge pricing is a common practice in the US sports world that Marathe comes from, but the suggestion that he might bring it here was greeted with gasps of horror across social media. And the Leeds United Supporters’ Trust said “we would always strongly oppose any model that results in fans paying more per ticket based on demand.”

Nationally, the Football Supporters Association, and their chair Tom Greatrex said: “Dynamic pricing models are just the latest way in which some are determined to exploit the loyalty of football supporters, without any recognition of the downsides on atmosphere, occasion and attendance, that are an integral part of what makes elite football so marketable”.

“It is only a couple of years since clubs and owners said football without fans is nothing – this approach risks pricing out the fans whose loyalty, passion and commitment is part of the ‘product’ sold around the world.” He also pointed out that at this summer’s World Cup, FIFA introduced surge pricing, leading to some truly eye-watering prices at many of the tournament’s fixtures.

In the face of this reaction, the club have backtracked a little, assuring the Supporters Trust that Marathe’s comments were not intended to be a ‘concrete future blueprint’ for the club’s pricing strategy. And that there would be a formal supporter consultation if a dynamic pricing system was considered.

And when The Athletic asked the club for clarification, a club spokesperson told them “Leeds United have no plans to introduce AI-driven dynamic ticket pricing at this time.” Which stands to reason when the current system is that non-season ticket holders have to go into a ballot for home games, so effectively all are purchased at the same time, with no possibility of increasing the price for latecomers.

But what if the club were to try to in introduce the model the future, once the Don Revie and John Charles stands have been extended? Dynamic pricing models are always designed to benefit those selling the service rather than you and I, but the need to comply with football’s sustainability regulations will encourage Maratha to want to get as much dosh as he can out of the supporters.

Whilst it may be superficially attractive to reward the fans who have been to the most games in the past, it would be harsh to try to squeeze every penny they can from those who have come along less frequently in the past. There are many reasons why fans might not have been able to get to as many games as they would have liked to in the past.

Such as financial pressures, having other commitments on matchdays, inconvenient kick-off times when they are changed to suit TV, living too far away, or being unable to get tickets for games they could have come to, because they were unlucky in the ballot. It would be harsh for the club to exploit the loyalty of the fans in any of these circumstances, and dynamic pricing would also deter casual fans who otherwise might come to more games in future.

It would be more understandable for the club to increase prices for the corporates who only want to bring their clients to the big games. But even then, some corporate tickets are bought by ordinary fans to celebrate a big occasion, or sometimes as an expensive last resort when they can’t get to see the game any other way.

So let’s hope that the club take note of the fact that dynamic pricing hasn’t worked out when clubs have tried it out in the past, and that they never do decide to exploit our loyalty by introducing it at Elland Road.

Tim Whelan