So many unsold seats for Aston Villa as Champions League pricing policy massively backfires
· Yahoo Sports
A huge backlash from Aston Villa fans two years ago when their club announced Champions League prices for the 2024/25 season.
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Prices set from £70 to £82 for season ticket holders for each home game. Whilst for Aston Villa fans (members and others) without season tickets, they had to pay £85 to £97 for each Champions League ticket.
Last Wednesday (14 October 2026) night saw Villa Park host its first home Champions League match in 18 months and I was amazed to see plenty of empty seats. This is despite Aston Villa working on a much reduced capacity due to development work on the stadium.
A crowd of only 34,705 including a couple of thousand Fenerbache fans as Aston Villa fans voted with their wallets.
I had a look into the details and on the day of the match, Aston Villa were still advertising tickets on sale for the Fenerbache match, clearly tickets that didn’t sell out.
Aston Villa fans had been far from happy with the fact that the extortionate Champions League prices of two seasons ago, had been further increased for this season. Season ticket holders at Villa Park paying between £73.50 and £83 for Champions League tickets this season, Aston Villa fans who don’t have season tickets having to pay between £89.50 and £99.
Villa fans seeing this pricing especially extortionate as their first two home Champions League matches were less attractive ones against Fenerbahce and Viking.
Moving forward a week and ahead of tonight’s Villa Park Champions League match I had a quick look on the official Aston Villa ticketing site. It looks far worse than the case last Wednesday night, only hours ahead of kick-off there are still thousands and thousands of tickets all around Villa Park that are unsold for this Viking match.
The price of football for fans in England is now a huge talking point as prices reach crazy levels, based on the fact that the big clubs have far more demand than supply.
As Aston Villa fans have shown though, things can go too far and even Champions League matches end up with empty seats.
Newcastle United fans saw prices rise throughout their 2025/26 Champions League campaign and the final St James’ Park match against Barcelona saw season ticket holders charged a minimum of £69 and United members a minimum of £74 for a ticket.
When Aston Villa fans called out their club on the extortionate Champions League ticket prices two seasons ago, the Aston Villa President of business operations, Chris Heck, gave this revealing answer/defence “We recognise and understand the depth of passion felt amongst fans and their recent frustration around ticket pricing. Achieving our sporting ambitions while complying with financial stability regulations requires difficult decisions. Financial fair play (FFP) rules prohibit owners from covering shortfalls to finance this ambition, so we need to generate as much revenue as possible through sponsorships, merchandise and ticket sales to ensure that we can keep the club where it rightfully belongs – competing and winning at the top of English and European football.”
Well, if you end up with thousands and thousands of empty unsold seats for home Champions League matches, it is a huge negative for both club and fans.