Neither Paris FC nor Saint-Etienne will have much reason to remember this game fondly. Indeed, there were very few events worth remembering. There were no goals, few shots and little drama. It was a drab, rain-soaked stalemate between the French capital's third most successful soccer team and the country's sleepiest giant.
It was on the field. The approximately 17,000 fans in attendance can think of themselves as taking part in a philosophical exercise that could play a role in shaping the future of the world's most popular sport.
Last November, Paris FC became the home of an unlikely revolution when it announced it would scrap ticket prices for the remainder of the season. There were some exceptions. A nominal rate for fans supporting the visiting team and a market rate for fans using hospitality suites.
However, everyone else can enter Stade Charléty, a compact stadium that Paris FC leases from the city government, for free.
In doing so, the club has launched a live-action experiment that examines some of the most serious issues affecting sport in the digital age. It's the relationship between cost and value. Connecting fans with local teams. And most importantly, what is it like to attend an event in a time when sports are just a branch of the entertainment industry?
At Paris FC, there was more pragmatic thinking than lofty thinking. Parisian football is currently dominated by Paris Saint-Germain, the eternal champions of France. Paris FC, on the other hand, was an unremarkable second-division team that played on loan, and whose history did not even rival Red Star, traditionally Paris' second team.
By opening their doors, clubs believed they could increase attendance, attract families and foster long-term loyalty. But we were equally interested in telling people it was there. “It was a kind of marketing strategy,” said Fabrice Ayrault, the club's general manager.
“To stand out in the Paris metropolitan area, you have to be different,” he said. “It was a good opportunity to talk about Paris FC.”
After a few months, most indicators show that the strategy worked. The number of spectators increased by more than a third. Matches held at times that appeal to school-age children attract the highest number of participants, demonstrating the club's success in attracting a younger demographic.
Paris FC tickets were never terribly expensive. Aymeric Pinto, a fan of 10 years, says participants previously only paid the equivalent of about $6, but the removal of even that shallow barrier has made a noticeable difference.
The match against Saint-Etienne drew a (mostly) closed-door audience of around 17,000 spectators. Although this number was the gold standard of the experiment, it was a bit misleading. In the 1970s, Saint-Etienne was France's preeminent team and had a sizable fan base to match.
Inside the stadium, the number of Saint-Étienne green jerseys confirmed that fact. Even in the area nominally reserved for home fans, it was clear that many people were there to cheer on the visitors. “Look around you,” said Thomas Ferrier. His Saint-Étienne shirt was visible under his raincoat. “The whole place is green.”
Still, the overall pattern is encouraging for Paris FC. The free ticket strategy will cost the club around $1 million in lost revenue and additional spending on security and staff, but the company's policy and supporter feedback made it worth it. That's what it is.
“It's good for the club,” Pinto said. “It's difficult to attract people in Paris.”
This positive result is consistent with the experience of Fortuna Düsseldorf, a German second-division club that pioneered the free ticket approach. Fortuna announced last year that it would allow fans to watch some matches for free, launching a five-year pilot program funded by sponsorship deals that could lead to the scrapping of ticket fees altogether.
Fortuna has already staged two of the three free games it had planned in the pilot phase. First, the club said it had received enough requests to fill the 52,000-seat stadium twice. In the second case, I could have done it three times. But more important is their impact outside of the game.
“Average attendance has gone from 27,000 to 33,000,” said Alexander Jobst, the club's chief executive. “Our merchandise sales have increased by 50%. Our sponsorship revenue has increased by 50%. Club membership has reached record numbers.”
Of course, correlation is not causation. “It's hard to link that to free games with any certainty,” Jobst says, but there's no other particularly convincing explanation. Fortuna traditionally moves between the German 1st and 2nd divisions. They still have hopes of promotion this season. Still, they are attracting more fans than when they easily won the second division in 2018.
Fortuna's rationale was more ideological than Paris FC's. Like all German football teams, Fortuna are member-owned, and the club says allowing fans free admission is a way to deepen its connection to the city and ensure that no one is left out of matches. I thought about it.
But that doesn't mean there weren't rewards. Fortuna also rents a stadium owned by the city. The club's hope was that by embarking on what was clearly seen as a 'social concept' they might be able to persuade the local government to spend a small amount of money on updating their facilities.
So while both initiatives have their roots in cold economics, and both clubs say their plans should not be interpreted as a blueprint for the future of the sport more broadly, both address deeper issues. It has functioned as a petri dish to solve problems.
The most obvious is the extent to which the price of a product affects its intrinsic value. In the context of sports, it always comes down to the assumption that fans are more likely to attend an event if they have already paid for admission, and even more likely if they have paid a significant amount of money. In contrast, no-cost tickets are inherently disposable.
At Fortuna Düsseldorf, we don't think that's a problem. “We had fewer no-shows with free games than with regular games,” Jobst said.
The situation in Paris is more complicated. “Fans often talk about the 'free ticket effect,'” said Rayan Benabderrahman, a relatively new Paris FC fan who rescinded his allegiance to Paris Saint-Germain a few years ago.
“People arrive late, leave early, and sometimes don't show up at all,” he noted. “A lot of people think it's not really their club and they're not paying for it, so if the weather is bad, it doesn't matter.”
A more important question may be how fans watching games inside stadiums should be categorized. Since they are observers of the spectacle, should they pay for the privilege? Or is it time to change that classification? Are the fans watching in the stadium actually part of the production?
Soccer, like other sports, is now primarily a television business. The team is funded by money from broadcast contracts. Start times will be readjusted to suit television viewers. The referee's decision will be reviewed by officials in a remote studio.
And if soccer is now content, part of that content, the chorus, the texture, the soundtrack, the spectacle, will be provided by the fans.
“Since the pandemic, there has been an increased awareness of the role of spectators in the 'direction' of sporting events,” said Luc Arondel, a professor at the Paris School of Economics. He noted that there is broad consensus in the academic literature that home-field advantage is real and that the most prominent factor in its existence is partisan crowd influence.
But the transformation of football into a television event also gives fans an economic role, Professor Arondell says. “The presence of supporters in the stadium could increase the attractiveness of the TV product and therefore the value of the TV rights,” he pointed out.
An argument could then be made that the club should progress further than Paris FC or Fortuna Düsseldorf. According to a paper co-authored by Professor Arondell, in some cases, for teams that receive some commercial or broadcast revenue, there is an argument to be made to encourage the presence of the most passionate fans, rather than just letting them in for free. In some cases, they may even have to pay a fee. They will be present.
As it stands, that is still a long way off. Fortuna's project is still in the testing phase. Ayrault said Paris FC would “consider” the policy after the season ends. That review probably won't even mention what happened on the field against Saint-Etienne in the slightest. However, the size of the crowd that saw this match, and all the extras involved in the production, could very well have an impact beyond Stade Charléty.
