Ahead of the 2011-12 season, the BBC have conducted a survey into the costs of supporting your chosen football club. Covering the Premier League, Football League and Scottish Premier League, they've considered a total of 104 clubs and how much you will be paying to turn up and watch them play this season.
The baseline they have used for their survey, the results of which appear on the BBC Sport website, is how much it would cost an adult to buy a single match ticket, a programme, a pie and a cup of tea - a simple index for comparing each club.
Obviously there's a very wide variation in prices between the Premier League giants and those down in League Two - what naturally interests us the most is what League One looks like, and how Yeovil Town compare to our peers. That's not always a simple exercise as clubs introduce new marketing ideas, wrapped up in promotional packages, but the BBC have kept things simple.
The costs quoted for a day out Huish Park, are £16.00 for the cheapest possible adult match ticket, £3.00 for a matchday programme, £3.00 for a pie and £1.70 for a cup of tea, which brings the cost of your day out watching Yeovil Town at home to £23.70. For reference, the matchday ticket quoted is for an advance purchase ticket for either the home terrace, away terrace, or East Stand wing blocks. These prices rise up to £21.00 if you are buying a Main Stand ticket on the day of the match.
In terms of League One prices, one notable fact is that the Glovers have the most expensive pies in the division, along with Milton Keynes Dons, with the traditional football food setting you back by the sum of £3.00. Just down the road in Bournemouth you will pay £2.20 for the same pie - the price also charged by Rochdale. The Beeb note that expensive pies appears to be a bit of a West Country trait, singling out Cheltenham Town, Bristol City, Bristol Rovers, Plymouth Argyle and Yeovil Town for charging above the odds for what is generally the same product elsewhere.
As far as the price of a cup of tea is concerned, the Glovers are in the upper half of the division's prices at £1.70 - for some bizarre reason the same cuppa costs £2.00 in Bury and Preston yet just £1.00 at their neighbours in Rochdale.
Matchday programmes are all priced at £3.00 throughout the division, apart from Carlisle United who buck the trend by pricing at £2.00.
As far as matchday tickets are concerned, the £16.00 cheapest adult ticket price puts the Glovers right in the middle - Rochdale, Preston and MK Dons are charging a tenner in some parts of their ground - three of eight clubs surveyed who offer that price. At the other end, London is clearly an expensive place to be, with Leyton Orient and Brentford the most pricey at £21.00 and £20.00 respectively, and Charlton Athletic also ranked high up in terms of costs. There's a definite North-South divide here, with nine of the ten cheapest clubs sitting north of Birmingham. However, it should be noted that for certain clubs, their pricing structures, do not always apply to the areas of the ground given over to away supporters - don't turn up to Spotland as a Glovers fan expecting to get in for a tenner.
Overall, the Glovers sit 12th out of 24 teams in League One, for the benchmarked cost of seeing a football match in the division - smack in the middle, although perhaps a little surprising given that the facilities at Huish Park are by the club's own admittance not the greatest in the world. The £23.70 cost of watching Yeovil Town is topped by Leyton Orient at £27.80, but if you're a Rochdale fan, you can get the same entertainment and benefits for just £16.20. Perhaps what's surprising is that it's cheaper to watch Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic in the Premier League and Watford in the Championship, using the BBC's benchmark, than it is to go to a middle-of-the-road League One side like Yeovil Town. No doubt that in such penny-pinching times, that such factors will come into supporters heads when picking and choosing where to watch their football over the coming season.
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