Charlton Athletic fans are still pinching themselves after their side secured promotion to the Championship on Sunday with victory against Leyton Orient at Wembley.
Macaulay Gillesphey’s 31st-minute free kick was enough to separate the two London sides in a closely contested League One play-off final, with nearly 40,000 watching from the Charlton end of the national stadium.
The step up to English men’s football’s second tier brings with it more TV revenue and bigger crowds, especially with away teams bringing greater followings. The Championship has the fifth biggest crowds in Europe behind the Premier League and the top divisions in Germany, Spain and Italy.
But wage costs will also go up as Charlton join the teams angling for a place in the Premier League. Fans will have to pay too. Season-tickets have now jumped in price by as much as £90 compared with when they first went on sale in March.
In March, existing full-price season-ticket holders could renew for either £325, £460 or £640. New season-ticket holders could buy for £335, £485 or £650.
Prices went up at the start of May before tickets went off sale on Sunday morning. They went back on sale on Sunday evening with a further hike, to £375, £550 and £695 for all.
Charlton’s cheapest seats – in the lower tier of the Covered End, behind the goal – are cheaper than neighbouring Millwall, who charge £483. But elsewhere in the ground, Addicks fans will be paying more than those at Millwall for non-family stand seats, where prices range from £495 to £592. New season tickets at the third London club in the Championship, Queen’s Park Rangers, range from £305 to £711.
Fans – and the club’s neighbours – will also need to get used to a range of kick-off times. Sky Sports shows five Championship matches each week, mostly on Saturday lunchtimes but also on Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and Mondays. A handful of Championship matches are also shown live on ITV.
But between now and the release of the EFL’s fixture list on June 26, Charlton fans can bask in the glory of a hard-fought 1-0 win at Wembley – and an amazing turnaround in fortune after a home defeat to Crawley Town in December left the booed-off team in 12th place.
After that, Nathan Jones’s side lost just three league matches and won 15 – and did not concede a goal in all three play-off matches.
Jones told The Times that he had been sleeping at the club’s Sparrows Lane training ground in New Eltham in his effort to prepare the club for promotion.
“Today was just a culmination of probably 16 months’ work, a lot of belief, a lot of sacrifice,” Jones said. “You can’t quantify the amount of work that’s gone into it because of every single sleepless night, every single phone call, every single time I’ve slept at the training ground, every single time my family’s had to sacrifice not seeing me.”
Season tickets are now on sale at cafc.co.uk or from The Valley from Tuesday.
📩 Follow The Greenwich Wire on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn or Threads. You can also sign up for WhatsApp alerts – or subscribe to our emails through the blue box above.
Comments are closed.