This year’s astronomic price jumps for replica kits appear very unethical.
Fans are a captive audience and now that Everton sell new adult home strips at £60 before you put an initial on the back, is it asking too much?
Hummel make our kit and a quick look at another Hummel kit sold in England is revealing, with Wycombe Wanderers selling theirs at £47. Ask a Wycombe fan and even that is too high. The average annual salary in the Wycombe area is £48k compared with Merseyside’s £35k.
So in setting shirt prices, Everton has clearly not based it on affordability, more on status, volume of demand and our insatiable loyalty. And all Premier League clubs are all selling shirts at prices vastly above their lower league counterparts, knowing thousands will pay up.
Is there room for complaint? And has Everton been opportunistic looking at the price of other Hummel shirts that are made with the exact same quality and just taking a bigger profit margin? Or does the cost of Hummel’s bid to be Everton’s main kit partner mean that Hummel have to claw it back within some of the margin at an increased RRP of £60?
If that’s the case, when we read ‘good news’ that Everton have charged £X million to a sports manufacturer to be the kit partner, it just means the shirts will be priced higher to pay that manufacturer back – effectively the fans pay the manufacturer’s sponsorship fee? The irony. It would be great to have that clarified by the club.
And we can be thankful that it’s the likes of Spurs and Arsenal (both £80 a shirt made by Nike and Adidas respectively) and Newcastle & Villa (both £70 a shirt and made by sportswear challenger Castore), whose fans are stumping up even more than us. Horrific pricing.
As for Liverpool’s Nike shirt, their £75 charge is £15 more than us but £5 less than Spurs’ Nike. So although predictably rinsing their fan base, Liverpool might have taken some view on regional income differences and the potential for a fan backlash if they had marketed a shirt at an £80 price-point.
Ultimately, should fans be dealing with these incredible hikes? The answer is no.
Over the last year, the daily news bulletins show members of the public interviewed, rightly complaining about milk, apples or crisps jumping about 15%. Though it’s a variety of supply chain costs forcing retailers to up prices – some would say it’s the work of very opportunistic retailers too.
Not that long ago, new home shirts were in the £39 / £45 range. So football merchandise inflation is on another level to natural food price inflation. It begs the question, just in the same way that away section match tickets have ceilings, should replica kits be capped, as there is clear opportunism here?
Kit and ticket sales are the two income streams where clubs have such a direct relationship with fans. But leagues feel they cannot tell private companies, the clubs, to price their own products a certain way, unless it was blanket policy like the ‘away section’ ticket prices.
Even then, the likes of Nike could argue that their kit is worth more than an Errea or an Umbro, or the club they have sponsored has more prestige. So big money brands would be the first to kick up a fuss and the Premier League could be too weak for that conversation.
Instead, we are left with clubs deciding how much they can tax their fans for their loyalty as extortionate player transfer fees and salaries force clubs to squeeze us across every part of the club’s revenue model.
Yes, Everton are charging too much, but could be charging more; it seems we’ve kept the price in a zone where it’s difficult to complain too harshly when looking at others. But shame on those other clubs for hitting the £80 mark in a year where most are struggling.
If the Premier League is to do its duty, however complex the discussions will be, some level of intervention needs to take place before next year’s kit releases.