Fans in Bangkok are being charged an extortionate rate to see Liverpool vs. Man United in pre-season, with ticket prices higher than the Champions League final.
On Thursday, a joint announcement from Liverpool and Man United confirmed the two long-standing rivals will meet in a pre-season friendly in Thailand this summer.
Simply billed as ‘The Match’, the clash will take place at the Rajamangala Stadium in Bangkok on July 12, and is to kick off the Reds’ summer warmup.
It will be the first time Liverpool have embarked on a pre-season tour since 2019, and the first time they have headed to the Far East since 2017.
But it appears organisers are cashing in on the rarity of the visit, and the profile of the friendly, with ticket prices revealed ahead of the pre-sale on April 1.
If you want an example of the contempt both Liverpool & United hold their fans in, here is the pricing structure for the pre-season match between the 2 in Bangkok.
Those red block seats are £455 each.
The cheapest (green) are £114.
Proper piss take. pic.twitter.com/27YVvogRZF
— Jim Il-Sung (@faipdeooiad) March 31, 2022
There are seven price bands, ranging from 5,000 baht in category 5 to 25,000 baht in the ‘platinum’ seats, which run along the sides of the pitch.
It seems as though the majority of seats are within the ‘silver’ band, which are priced at 20,000 baht a ticket.
For those in England, then, the prices range from £114 for the cheapest seats to £569.50 for the most expensive, while ‘silver’ tickets are £455.50.
The minimum wage in Bangkok is around £226 a month.
As significant an occasion this may be for those fans in the Far East who have long dreamed of seeing Jurgen Klopp‘s Reds, that is over £100 for the worst seat in the house.
There are no guarantees over the players involved for the friendly, with no real incentive despite the ‘Bangkok Century Cup’ being up for grabs.
And the ridiculous pricing structure is made worse when compared to tickets for the 2022 Champions League final – or even season tickets at Anfield.
In February, UEFA announced a price freeze for category 3 and category 4 tickets for the next three men’s finals, as well as providing 5,000 free tickets to each club this year as a goodwill gesture after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Category 4 tickets are priced at £59 and category 3 tickets at £151.80, while in 2021, category 2 tickets cost £380 and category 1 tickets £506.
Prices for tickets in categories 1 and 2 are likely to rise for 2022, but it remains staggering that Thai fans are being charged more for a pre-season friendly.
Meanwhile, Liverpool announced in March that season-ticket prices had been frozen for the seventh year running, with the most expensive tickets in the Main Stand priced at £869 for the campaign.
Though there are issues with availability when it comes to Liverpool season tickets – with over 70,000 people on the waiting list – the least expensive, sat in the far corners of the Kop, costs £685 for 19 Premier League games.
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