How Brentford Is Making Football Affordable For Fans: Inside Club’s Gen10 Initiative
Brentford aims to make football more affordable for fans with a new ticket scheme beginning in 2025.
Brentford’s new Gen10 initiative will see the club subsidize the cost of all junior away tickets, ensuring travelling junior fans will pay no more than £10 to watch the club in the Premier League.
Currently, away tickets can cost as much as £25 in the Premier League for under-18s. The introduction of Gen10 sets a new standard, making football more accessible to young fans and families.
In an exclusive interview with Steve Watts, Brentford’s Marketing Services Director, he outlined the aims of this initiative and the club’s long-term vision for financial sustainability in football.
“The way that we choose to run our business is ideally for the good of the fans,” said Watts.
“We’re trying to make their lives better. We want to build a community of Brentford fans, and especially young Brentford fans.
“We want to encourage families back into the away end because personally, I feel that seeing your team win away is a completely different and special experience. It’s something you remember as a kid forever.
“That connection with the club is almost cemented through that experience. In this digital age, the game has lost the physical connection to people at times, and I think it’s really important that we try and allow as many under-18s to experience that as possible.”
Watts and the rest of the team working behind the scenes at Brentford discovered that their away support from under-18s and families had reduced over the last two years due to the rising costs associated with attending a Premier League game. This led to the idea for Gen10.
“By the age of 12, I think most allegiances in football are made,” Watts explained.
“So you need to capture the attention of young fans early and that usually means you need to bring their mum or dad along with them. Therefore, the game needs to be affordable for them to both be able to attend.
“We’ve already got 35% more under-18s attending the first game [vs Southampton] than on average. So it’s already made an initial impact.”
On the pitch, Brentford has been struggling in away games this season. The Bees are yet to win an away game on the road after nine attempts and have the second worst away record in the Premier League.
When asked about the initiative and whether the increased attendance could help improve the club’s away form, Head Coach Thomas Frank said, “Hopefully, yes. We would like to have a lot of our fans travelling to away games.
“One thing is the support, another thing is the unique togetherness you have with your fellow fans when you travel together, go to the pub before the game, and celebrate a win,” Frank continued.
“That togetherness, I think, you need to create that because that’s what gives you those incredible experiences.”
The Gen10 initiative begins when Brentford travel to Southampton on the 4th of January. The Bees have a great opportunity to earn their first win on the road and kick off the new year and the new campaign with a winning start.
Practice What You Preach
Ticket prices are becoming an increasingly controversial topic within football. The current cost of living crisis means that football fans are forced to make various sacrifices in different parts of life just to get by.
Despite numerous protests and vocal disappointment from fans, ticket prices continue to rise as clubs claim that they need to generate additional revenue and meet the obligations of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).
One of the most interesting features of the incredible Gen10 initiative is that it also applies to junior fans of opposition clubs visiting the Gtech Community Stadium.
“I think it’s extremely important to practice what you preach,” said Watts. “We believe that all Junior tickets in the Premier League should be very affordable and for us that pricing is £10. That includes the revenue coming to us from away junior fans who visit the Gtech.
“It’s something we would love other clubs to consider looking at and adopting. It’s about football. It’s about falling in love with a game. We want to stand out as a club that are on a wavelength with the supporters.
“We’re never going to get a die-hard, let’s say Fulham fan to come and start supporting Brentford. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t be a club that treats them right.”
Doing The Right Thing
Brentford’s announcement came just days after Manchester United controversially increased their ticket prices to £66 per game, with no concessions for children or pensioners. However, Watts claims that this was just a coincidence, as the West London club began planning this initiative several months ago.
“We started talking about this in September,” he explained. “Jon Varney, our CEO, and the whole team are very open to exploring things that are favorable to fans. We put the idea through our executive committee and we agreed it.
“We want to be an asset to the Premier League, both in terms of the way that we play football and compete, but also the way that we behave off the field.
“We want people that don’t really have a team to go, ‘I wish more clubs would do things that way,’” said Watts.
“Every club has a different model,” Watts continued. “They have to decide on their own terms if they can offer something like this.
“While the cost of doing this isn’t insignificant to us, what’s more important to us is that we have more young fans coming to games. They are our fans of tomorrow.
“In 10 years time, I would love this end of West London for the kids to be coming out of school mainly wearing red and white stripes.”
Long-Term Vision
At a time when other Premier League clubs are increasing ticket prices and pricing out fans, Brentford’s commitment to keeping football affordable for the next generation is commendable.
Their Gen10 initiative is just one part of their long-term vision to keep football affordable for fans.
In addition to offering subsidized coaches for fans travelling to away games, the Bees have also partnered with Trainline to offer a 20% discount on train tickets, making away travel more affordable for fans.
The club has also done a shirt rollover every year since being promoted to the top flight, ensuring fans do not have to spend money buying a new shirt every season, becoming the first club in the Premier League era to do so.
Additionally, while other London clubs continue to raise season ticket prices, Brentford has frozen theirs for next season.
“When you’ve got an owner that’s a fan, it gives you that dynamic that is just different,” said Watts. “From our perspective, we want to make sure that we are looking at things consistently from a fan’s perspective”
“It’s about trying to do the right thing and looking at pinch points for fans and being an accessible club for anybody to come and join, whether you’re middle class or whether you struggle to make ends meet.
“It’s a very cliche term, ‘a community club’, but Brentford is just that,” Watts remarked. “Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do.
“We’re a club that was saved by the fans, was owned by a fan, run by a fan. We’re all in it together.
“I think that kind of alignment comes from the top down and that’s our superpower, really. Everybody believes in the same thing.
“Our long-term aim is to grow our fan base,” Watts revealed. And if you’re never going to be a fan of Brentford, at least you respect us as a football club and what we’re trying to do.”
Brentford is leading the way in ensuring the next generation grows up in love with the beautiful game, not priced out of it.
Fans are, and will always be, the most important stakeholder in football. Initiatives like Gen10 should not only be celebrated, but also adopted by other clubs that want to show they are connected to their fanbase and are empathetic to their problems.
