I can pinpoint the exact moment that I fell in love with Leicester City Football Club.
Up until the age of 4 or 5 or so, I was adamant that I hated football. I wouldn’t play football with my brothers on the field near our house, I wouldn’t watch it at home and I certainly wouldn’t watch it in the stadium. Strange, considering how my dad followed Leicester near religiously, and my brothers had Leicester curtains and bedsheets and teddy bears and towels and… everything.
One evening my dad dragged me to the football with one of my brothers and I was not happy about it. From his perspective, the League One ticket was cheap enough that it meant we could see if I’d enjoy myself without breaking the bank.
I remember not enjoying myself at all. And then someone played Matty Fryatt through and he belted it past the keeper. I jumped up excitedly and celebrated the late winner. I looked over at some of the emptier parts of the stadium and saw two men run across vacant seats to hug each other with joy. I was all in from that moment on.
I quickly had Leicester shirts, readily available for affordable prices at the club shop, the shop in the city centre and in most charity shops. I was able to follow Leicester from a young age.
Fast forward to 2026 and the story could not be more different. Heading into the new season and fans are expected to pay £20 for 6 pre-season friendlies or £5 for each individual match. How can working class fans of the next generation justify that to their parents or carers in a cost-of-living crisis?
The cheapest child’s new season ticket is £42 for an under 8, but of course they cannot attend alone, and so for that and one adult season ticket the average price is more than £500. Again, pricing out a new generation of Leicester City fans.
But at least they are watching higher quality to justify the prices, right? At least the football and players are easy to fall in love with and reward loyalty to the football club, yeah?
Nothing about this football club has really rewarded loyalty. Even the occasional free Chang beers are only accessible to people who have already paid for the privilege of attending the King Power.
It is worth noting that Leicester City in the Community does some fantastic work with young people. The love and care they show is highly commendable.
I spoke to a lifelong Leicester fan who runs the popular Instagram retro account Fox Leisure Files about my concerns for the club, and he concurs:
“The individual ticket prices are huge. The example I often use is when I was trying to take my son to his first game. It should have been a very special event for him but the club made it as difficult as possible.
He wasn’t able to sit with his dad, uncle and grandad as more than two adults per one child isn’t allowed in the family stand – it makes you think what’s the point in going if we can’t sit together as a family and he’s disappointed.
As a kid in the 1990s and 2000s we had open days. You’d get to go round the stadium, dressing room, meet Filbert the Fox for free. Those experiences as a very young kid made me feel close to it. We don’t have any of that now.
The open days were huge. Thousands went. It was the perfect way to attract new fans and get more of the local community interested in the club. Now we have no access at all.”
Family Night Football made a generation of Leicester fans fall in love with the club, regardless of money being made from them. They were easily able to watch Leicester at Filbert Street. It meant that fans were invested in seeing youth players prosper and would be more likely to follow both their fortunes and those of the club in the future. The location was accessible to fans across the city even if the family didn’t have a car to drive to and from the stadium.
Youth team updates today are minimal. There is not much communication from the club about it at all on any of the major social media platforms. They now play all their games at Seagrave – an objectively incredible facility, but only accessible by car, meaning yet again there is less accessibility for fans from all social backgrounds.
Even 10 years ago, multiple youth games a season were hosted at the King Power. I remember watching Ben Chilwell, Hamza Choudhury, Harvey Barnes and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall thanks to cheap tickets in an accessible location. My family couldn’t afford tickets to see Leicester’s title-winning season other than the odd game. That eats me up inside daily, but at least I had an affordable way to keep attending the ground and following the club – what is there now? It’s not even free to watch pre-season friendlies on your phone.
Although the prices of this season’s kits are in line with the wider football shirt market, it still means a large majority of fans will either miss out or turn to problematic fake shirts made from cheaper materials at the expense of sweat shop workers.
There have been multiple city-based events, meet and greets with players, kit launches and world cup watch-alongs at the King Power, but all have either been ticketed or solely there to push merchandise sales to already stretched families.
Change is needed at Leicester City Football Club, that much is clear. Rewarding fans’ loyalty would be a start; make pre-season friendlies free to watch for all fans, subsidise the prices of new kits for season ticket holders, put on a shuttle bus to Seagrave so people can access the facility easily for youth team games. More generally, don’t take every opportunity to make money from fans. Yes, financial aid is needed to stabilise the club, but it shouldn’t be up to fans to foot the wages of players on outrageous contracts.
There is a consensus about this throughout the majority of the fanbase. The Foxes Trust’s recent survey states that “supporters felt League One season ticket pricing was inappropriate [with] prices unchanged from Premier League rates. The data reflects a clear expectation that pricing should match the lower division.”
A lack of value for money was also reflected within the survey; “on-pitch performance (85%) and poor atmosphere (64%) are the primary factors harming the matchday experience, with atmosphere also deterring 41% of those attending fewer games.”
I cannot see how or why fans of the next generation will fall in love with this football club until things change. Where will the next generation’s Matty Fryatt moment come from?
