Commercial boss insists Wolves fans are paying 'fair price'

The rise received criticism from the club’s supporters’ trust but Clark believes the cost of tickets remain “fair” and “reasonable” when compared with other Premier League clubs.

Wolves’ cheapest season ticket is now priced at £590, an increase of £41 and £200 more expensive than the cheapest seats at both Leicester and West Ham.

But Clark, the club’s general manager for commercial operations, believes that is an unfair barometer on which to judge pricing, with many clubs also selling tickets considerably more expensive than those at Molineux.

He explained: “I think that what a lot of clubs do, which we’ve not done in the past, and won’t do going forward, is they have a real headline-grabbing low price.

“Every year that’s the number that’s flouted around and clubs can get some really favourable PR by doing that.

“West Ham next year have got a season ticket at £299, they’ve also got a season ticket at £1,500.

“Man United are the same; they’ve got one at £532, but they’ve also got one at £950. That happens with clubs in and around us. Brighton are another one; they’ve got a £545 cheapest, but then they’ve got a £860.

“Where we are is our cheapest season ticket is more expensive than all of those clubs but actually our most expensive will be £786, which is lower than all of those clubs.

“I think cheapest ticket in isolation is not a great yardstick of how a club prices on the whole.

“The work that we’ve done makes us somewhere in the middle of the Premier League table from a pricing perspective. On average, the gap between our cheapest and most expensive ticket is a lot smaller than most clubs in the Premier League.”

In a statement last month, the Wolves 1877 Trust expressed its disappointment at the rise in season ticket prices, pointing out how the cost of living crisis was making things tough for many supporters.

It read: “Ticket prices have increased at Molineux every season since 2018, so the Trust has every right to be disappointed that, at a time of an escalating cost of living crisis, the club have chosen to further increase ticket prices.”

Clark insisted the club were not blind to the impact of economic conditions. To that end, they have removed the £20 fee from direct debit purchases, while the payment schedule for the latter has been extended from six to nine months.

A new age category has been introduced for supporters aged between 18 to 21, with season ticket prices frozen for that group. For the sale of single match tickets, the club will also introduce a cheaper category C for lower profile fixtures.

Clark added: “We feel that the pricing we’ve got is again fair, reasonable, and we’re wanting to price at the market value of a mid-table Premier League club and I think we’ve achieved that.

“Fans will see that pricing is going to be fair next year if they look at that bigger picture rather than just focus solely on that cheapest ticket price.”

He continued: “I think on average, from an adult perspective, the increase is going to be around £2.30 per game, which when you pair that with the other things that we’re putting in place, we think that we’re in a pretty good place in terms of fans receiving the best product for the price they’re paying.”