Ticket rises and more TV packages - why is price of sport increasing?

At least £115 to watch a day of the Ashes in Birmingham - unless you are an Edgbaston member.

A minimum of £255 for a standard seat at the Wimbledon singles finals.

Prices starting from £289 for general admission to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on raceday.

Those are the ticket fees British sports fans have been told a single adult must pay if they want to attend some of the country's most beloved sports events in 2027.

The cost of entry to elite sport in the UK has risen sharply in the 2020s, but attendances across the majority of sports are as strong as ever.

Even for armchair fans watching at home, the breadth and expense of television subscriptions can be a barrier to accessing sport.

So what exactly is behind the rise in prices, can the increases possibly be justified and what does it all mean for fans?

In a new BBC Radio 5 Live programme - The Price of Our Sport - BBC Sport has taken a look.

Fans reacted with anger when some of the ticket price rises for major events next year were announced earlier this summer.

The increase in Ashes ticket prices is stark - the minimum price the last time Edgbaston held a Test in 2023 was £65, a rise of £50 to £115 in just four years. Admission to other venues, including The Oval, is even higher.

Last time out in Australia, some seats were sold to fans at all five venues for between £16 and £22.

At Wimbledon next year, the most expensive standard seat for both the men's and women's singles finals will be £400, £50 more than 2026, and more than double the cost from 2017.

That still makes Wimbledon the cheapest of the four Grand Slams, but even a Centre Court ticket for the middle Saturday of the tournament now costs at least £130.

General admission for Grand Prix Sunday at Silverstone is up to £289 from £189 in 2021, while the cheapest allocated seat now costs at least £609, up from £276 five years ago.

And general admission to the 2027 Ryder Cup at Adare Manor, in the Republic of Ireland, will cost €499 (£434), compared with up to €260 (£220) in Italy in 2023.

And other events which took place this year laid bare just how much more fans are being charged.

Fans paid £150 to attend a day of The Open at Royal Birkdale earlier this year, compared to £95 at St Andrews in 2022.

Prices for the FA Cup final varied from £50 to £285 in 2026, compared with £50 to £120 in 2016.

"It's just ludicrous," says Lee Hanlon, an England cricket fan who lives close to Edgbaston, but has decided not to attend next summer's Ashes because of the price rise.

"I'm angry. It seems like a lot of the normal cricket fans have been priced out. It seems like just people with money are going now.

"The increase is just too much. I find it upsetting."

But for event organisers, the prices chime with wider trends.

"We exist in an experience economy - we have definitely seen a subtle shift in the value people are placing on belonging, on the atmosphere you can be part of when you attend a live experience," says Mark Darbon, chief executive of the R&A, which operates golf's Open Championship.

"So when we set our prices we start by looking at some of the other major sporting events and benchmark ourselves, on price and value for money, by looking at what others are delivering."

In a poll on the BBC Sport website, 95% of respondents voted that tickets for the 2027 Ashes were too expensive.

A spokesperson for Edgbaston said: "Our entry-level ticket prices roughly match inflation compared to the last time Australia visited Edgbaston in 2023 - but like the rest of the country, we're battling increased costs and trying to manage these wherever we can."

Whether prices are set by governing bodies or the stadiums, the costs of putting on a major sports event include things like utilities, staffing, technology, insurance and marketing.

"Ticketing revenue generates less than 20% of our total revenue from The Open," Darbon says.

"We have seen really significant cost inflation in recent years. It now costs us 25% more than it did five or six years ago to host The Open - that could be £10-12m in incremental costs. We have to cover those costs."

Many prestige events and newly built venues also include an increased proportion of hospitality ticketing, which can drive up costs for fans wanting standard tickets.

"We are seeing more and more regular people willing to pay for a special experience at sport," says Richard Flint, chairman of Seat Unique, an online platform specialising in hospitality and VIP ticketing for events.

"Corporate boxes are being broken down more and more into individual seats, so it's less about people taking 10 of their colleagues and more about a couple, or four people, going together.

"[Teams and leagues] want to grow their revenue off the back of it, undeniably. Premium is much more open to people or go to one or two games a year, or who have travelled from abroad to come.

"Sometimes stadiums need updating and the revenue from premium ticketing can help fund a new stadium or new stand, so there are benefits to the everyday fan."

In a world with increasingly volatile economics and changing consumer habits, broadcasting live sport has been one of the more reliable ways for companies to generate revenue.

And live sport - and entertainment - is one of the few industries whose financial success is unlikely to be significantly compromised by artificial intelligence in the coming years.

That means more and more companies have taken an interest in buying the rights to show sports events, which means more TV subscriptions than ever before are necessary for fans wanting to watch all of the action.

A football fan in the UK, for example, must subscribe to Sky Sports, TNT Sports, Amazon Prime and Premier Sports, if they want to watch all of the matches across the Premier League, Champions League and Scottish Premiership.

And they must pay for an annual TV licence to watch other matches on the BBC and ITV.

Without taking advantage of special offers, other sports can require even more subscriptions and even more money.

"It certainly helps when you can say to a fan that they only need to buy one subscription to see everything in one sport," says Pete Oliver, CEO of growth markets for DAZN, a global sports streaming service.

"If a sport is very fragmented, we would say it's not going to be a great proposition for the fan [for us to be involved], and it's probably not going to be a great commercial prospect for us.

"The cost of entertainment [subscriptions] generally will increase over time.

"There is natural inflation in the market, there is a lot of competition for sports rights, the athletes want to be paid more money, and the leagues want to do what is right for them, and if they can get somebody to pay more for the content, they will"

In some sports, including Premier League football, the money which leagues and clubs are earning from TV rights is by far their biggest source of income, but has plateaued to an extent in recent years.

So broadcasters are not necessarily always shelling out significantly higher costs for rights, but fans are still being charged more to watch.

Increased competition, growing operational costs and an uncertain long-term financial model all play a role.

"I think in the short term, the fans who are not going to illegal solutions are going to pay more to watch sport," says Pierre Maes, author and consultant in sports media rights.

"But we have reached a kind of roof - people have to pay a lot [and] we know that higher prices and more fragmentation leads to more piracy.

"People seem to have no moral obstacle to going with piracy. You can say that's bad, and that it's theft, but the reality is that people don't care.

"The music industry had to deal with this problem. In the long term, I think there is no other path than a Spotify of sports.

"Otherwise, sports will lose their fans and lose their attention."