The cost of policing football matches has risen for three seasons in a row since the pandemic, costing tens of millions of pounds in public money every season in London alone.
Last season the Metropolitan Police paid over £21m towards match-day policing. Despite the huge profits of top-flight football clubs, the Met has covered a vast majority of costs.
Co-host of the football focused Behind the Ball podcast Liam Headen told the Kingston Courier: “It’s a reasonable request for the high earning clubs, those in the Premier League, to pay more for policing at games. The police are what keeps the fans safe and the match day running smoothly; they are a vital part of the game.
“This goes beyond just inside the stadium, police presence is evident from even a mile away from the game being played as that’s what is required.”
Former Met Chief Lord Hogan Howe, speaking on leading UK think tank the Policy Exchange agreed, saying: “The easiest way to resolve it is to make the clubs pay for policing which is not at the grounds.”
The costs arise from the fact that clubs are only obligated to pay for officers in the football grounds through Special Police Services (SPS) arrangements.
Officers outside the stadium and in the surrounding area are not covered by SPS agreements, and therefore come at a cost to police, with clubs paying just a small percentage.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said during LBC’s Call the Commissioner: “There are very few officers in the grounds. All the ones outside on horses, all dealing with disorder before and afterwards, around train stations etc, that adds up to £18.5m last year [2023], not paid for.”
The trend looks set to continue. In the first month of the current 2024/25 season alone, the Met has spent over four million pounds policing football matches across London, with just seven percent of this being paid back by football clubs.
Clubs are taking on a larger percentage of the bill each season as more officers are devoted to policing matches at grounds.
However, the amount that the Met pays is still increasing at a sharp rate due to the overall costs of policing spiking in recent years due to heavier police presences since the pandemic.
Data revealed by the Met for the first half of the 2024/25 season shows a similar trajectory.
A policing cost of nearly £10m has fallen on the Met so far, with just over half a million being paid back by clubs.
Costs have risen significantly in the seasons following the pandemic, jumping from 14 to 21m pounds in fees last season.
Podcaster Headen said that asking clubs to pay the whole bill is not fair either due to the massive tax contributions of top clubs, which in part funds the police.
He added: “Clubs are constantly putting out messages of anti-hate and abuse, they try their best to minimise the need for police, but ultimately if over 50,000 people are flocking to an area then it will need policing and I don’t think that’s the fault of the clubs.
“Perhaps this money could come directly from the League itself to avoid financial issues with clubs, but it’s about time we help invest in a crucial aspect of what makes football.”
Leader of the Football Policing Unit, Chief Constable Mark Roberts, speaking to the BBC, said that police subsidising the cost of football matches on such a large scale and on a regular basis is not right.
He added: “Even sometimes immediately outside the ground where there is a requirement for police to manage the entrance and exit of fans, we can no longer recover that cost.”
Roberts has called for clubs to pay the whole bill adding that “the police shouldn’t be subsidising football as an industry”.
He said that it is the bigger clubs who can afford to pay the additional costs are the ones responsible for attracting high policing fees, due to larger crowds.
For example, in the 2023/24 season, Tottenham Hotspur alone incurred a policing cost of over £2.2m as over 62,000 fans regularly flocked to their north London ground.
Speaking on who should pay the cost of policing, football fan Becky Collins said: “I think the responsibility should fall more towards the clubs because it’s the safety of their fans and players.”
Collins added that clubs should pay proportionately to their total ticket sales to maintain fairness across football. She said: “The Premier League is going to have more to put into it.”
The reason behind the soaring costs of match-day policing is not clear, but the Premier League has said that, working with police, new tougher measures have been introduced to combat “unacceptable fan behaviour” in recent seasons.
Former policing minister Chris Philp said that a solution between the Premier League and police across the country was “actively being worked on” while speaking to LBC in January 2024.
No announcement on costs has been made since.
