When I first began planning a soccer trip to the United Kingdom in the summer of 2019, I had no idea how to buy Premier League tickets, especially from the U.S.
I’m used to the typical ticket-buying channels seen across North American sports. The teams sell tickets to their home games, yes, but a buyer’s first instinct often is to check Ticketmaster or some other independent outlet. And then there’s the secondary market — StubHub, SeatGeek and the like — where bargains can often be found and last-minute tickets are nearly always available.
It’s understandable that the market for soccer tickets in England is not like that, but before attempting to secure tickets myself, I didn’t understand how different it would be.
The major clubs have strict control over the sale of their match tickets — and understandably so, because demand can often be through the roof. After all, we’re talking about some of the world’s most popular sports teams here.
I have navigated the murky waters of trying to buy Premier League tickets on two separate occasions. I was all set to attend two matches — a Tottenham Hotspur fixture in the Premier League, as well as Manchester City’s showdown with Real Madrid in the Champions League quarterfinals.
That trip was scheduled for March 2020, though, and I don’t think I have to tell you why I had to abruptly cancel it.
The second time around, in August 2022, I returned to England at the start of the new Premier League season and managed to score tickets to THREE matches! And then, I added one more new stadium as part of another visit in the spring of 2024.
Now, I feel I have a good grasp on how to get into some of the UK’s most popular football grounds, which I’ll outline below. And with the Premier League having released their fixtures for the 2024-25 campaign, maybe you are also looking to plan a trip to see live matches from abroad — be it from the USA or elsewhere.
Make no bones about it: Buying Premier League tickets can be a time-consuming, sometimes frustrating and possibly expensive exercise.
But if you truly want to see Premier League clubs in action, persistence is the name of the game. Here are some tips for getting into your preferred matches.
Step 1: Choosing your dates
If you’re like me, you choose the dates in which you want to travel based on your schedule with work, school or other obligations, and then once that timeframe is set, then you go about seeing what events might be happening at your destination during that time.
First off, you have to make sure your dates fall within the normal soccer season in England. The Premier League season typically runs from the second weekend in August to the middle of May, while Champions League matches throughout Europe coincide with this timeframe and typically culminate in the final in late May or early June.
In English football, there are also domestic competitions, namely the FA Cup and Carabao Cup (aka League Cup), that coincide with the Premier League season.
Summertime is typically reserved for international competitions (the World Cup or European Championships, for example). If your visit is in late July or early August, close to the start of the new Premier League season, you may also have opportunities to watch preseason friendlies.
Step 2: Finding your fixture opportunities
It stands to reason that if you’re in the U.S., finding a game for which to buy tickets is as easy as looking at a schedule for the Premier League, or the Champions League bracket, but it’s not that simple.
When the Premier League releases its fixtures for the upcoming season (usually in mid-June), matches are divided into “matchweeks” and scheduled for the Saturday of that week at 3 p.m. British time.
However, only some matches will wind up being played at that time; others — mainly ones involving popular clubs that visitors would often like to see — will get moved up to Friday, or back to Sunday or Monday, and kickoff times usually change as well. This is done to fill prime TV broadcast windows (not unlike the NFL “flexing” a game into the coveted Sunday night time slot), and also to allow clubs to participate in matches for other competitions.
It makes things tricky, though, for the traveler from the USA or elsewhere who wants to buy tickets for matches a few months ahead. In the Premier League, fixture times are set in stages, and for a couple months at a time. In the case of my first trip, I had to wait until late January to find out exactly when my target matches in mid-March would take place.
The Premier League usually sets a schedule for when fixture times will be announced, so it’s worth following them on Twitter or another social media platform to stay abreast of announcements. Similarly, it’s worth keeping an eye on dates for Champions League draws, but at least match dates for every stage known before each year’s tournament begins.
Step 3: Should you buy a membership?
So how, exactly, do you buy tickets for the Premier League from the U.S.? Well, it all begins with the individual clubs. Once you’ve identified a match that you want to attend, you should then check out the ticket-buying procedures put in place by the home club in question, outlined on each team’s website.
You’ll quickly discover, though, that for some Premier League clubs — at least, the ones you routinely see near the top of the table — buying a club membership is required to even get into the team’s ticket portal.
For a yearly fee, a membership gets you perks including gifts, team store discounts and exclusive access to club-produced content, but of course the main benefit is it gives you the opportunity to buy tickets when they go on sale.
Each club controls its supply for matches regardless of what competition they’re for, be it a “regular” league match or for the Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup, and so on.
My original plans in 2020 included one Premier League match (Tottenham Hotspur vs. West Ham at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium) and one Champions League game (Manchester City vs. Real Madrid at the Etihad Stadium), so I bought memberships for both Spurs and Man City.
This time around, the schedule gave me opportunities to see Tottenham, Manchester United and Arsenal. So yes, I bought memberships for all three clubs — for myself and my wife, as every individual who wishes to attend a match needs his or her own membership.
Note that some teams structure their member ticket-buying rules differently. Some, like Manchester City, allow members to purchase multiple tickets under a single membership. But many, such as Tottenham, require each ticketholder to hold an individual membership. When I bought tickets for my original trip from the USA, I needed one Man City membership for the scheduled Champions League match but two for Tottenham so that I could buy a pair of tickets for the league fixture.
So yeah, it can get a little convoluted. But if you’re a fan of a specific club and want to follow them around, then it gets much simpler. Buy the one membership and then you’ll have access to tickets for that team’s road matches, as well — as you may know, European soccer stadiums all have designated visiting supporter sections.
Also, know that for the most popular clubs in England — in my experience, this includes Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea — the demand for tickets makes obtaining them on a single-match basis a challenge, and seniority (as in, how long you’ve held a membership and how many matches you’ve attended) is a primary factor in how clubs allow access to tickets.
If you really want to see a home match for one of these clubs without the hassle of competing with longtime fans, feel free to skip ahead to Step 5.
Step 4: Online sales
Once you have your memberships, then there’s nothing left but to buy the tickets. There’s a unique challenge to this, though, as online ticket sales in Britain are conducted similarly to in the USA, but the time difference can make for some early wake-up calls.
To buy tickets for both matches in the spring of 2020, I woke up at 2 a.m. Pacific time (I live in Southern California) in order to secure seats. I was successful on both counts, so it was worth it.
That experience made me confident that I would score tickets fairly easily for my second go-round. But I failed to take into account the increased demand that comes with start-of-season excitement. For each of the three matches I targeted, I woke up in the middle of the night to buy tickets in the initial single-match release … and struck out each time.
At that point, it pays to know what alternatives you have. Each club has a ticket-resale scheme in place, which allows season-ticket holders to sell tickets they won’t use back to the club. It works similarly to Ticketmaster’s NFL Ticket Exchange, but with one key difference: Resale prices are not set according to demand, making them affordable — that is, if you can get your hands on them.
In the case of the Spurs match I wanted to attend, it took three days of constantly checking the ticket portal, waiting for A) a pair of tickets to be listed, and B) moving quickly enough to beat everyone else lurking on the site for tickets. But I finally secured my two tickets, and at £60 per ticket (plus small fees), it wasn’t too bad.
Once you have your tickets in hand, pay attention to each club’s policy on how they distribute tickets. In the case of Spurs, you’re sent a unique mobile pass that signifies you’re a member AND you have a ticket for a particular match. Manchester City mailed their tickets to me, and so even though I didn’t get to use it, I got a nice little souvenir.
Step 5: Should you buy a hospitality package?
OK, you bought the membership and struck out during the various ticket on-sales, or you’ve decided last-minute to try and see a high-demand match, or you really, REALLY want to see a match at Anfield or Stamford Bridge and it’s proving nearly impossible. What to do?
There is one fool-proof alternative: the hospitality package.
They don’t come cheap (think somewhere between £300 and £500 per person depending on the club and the match), but anyone can buy them regardless of membership status, and they come with perks such as a catered meal, a stadium tour or merchandise discounts.
Every club offers them, and if you really are that set on seeing the match you want and money is no object, well, buying a hospitality package will certainly help you achieve that goal.
Cost notwithstanding, buying hospitality tickets through the club at least gives you the peace of mind that you’re getting into the ground no matter what — and that you’ll be treated pretty well in the process.
Step 6: Should you buy tickets from the secondary market?
Of course, you might have a budget that precludes you from splurging on a hospitality package. If that’s the case, your main alternative is the secondary market.
Unlike in the USA, where ticket resellers are numerous and generally reliable even for the biggest events, scalping is a little more frowned upon in the UK. The English clubs tend to offer some stern warnings about not accepting tickets bought second-hand, going so far as to claim popular portals like StubHub are blacklisted.
That’s a big reason why memberships exist in the first place: They’re a way of assuring the clubs that the people who buy the tickets are the ones using them, and that people aren’t buying season tickets just to profit off them.
I can confess, though, that I have attended a match using tickets bought second-hand. I used a popular resale portal called LiveFootballTickets.com to buy tickets for an Arsenal match at Emirates Stadium — doing so only after I failed multiple times to get tickets for the match I wanted through the normal channels.
The purchase — which was perhaps a 75 percent markup from face value — put us in direct contact with the seller, who had to give us his mobile membership badge via text for entry to the stadium a few days before the match. In essence, I pretended I was this other person, a paid Arsenal member, for a day.
Entering the stadium went smoothly and we thoroughly enjoyed the match. However, during our wait in the queue I witnessed someone whose mobile pass was rejected multiple times at the scanner, forcing him to walk away in a huff to presumably get things sorted out elsewhere. I don’t know why that happened, but it was a reminder of how strict the ticket process is in England.
So in summary, while secondary options do exist and seem both reputable and reliable, they’re not foolproof. In the end, you’ll have to understand the risk involved. My stance is that I would definitely consider buying tickets second-hand, but only as a last resort.
Step 7: Enjoy the match!
Congratulations! You made it! Taking in an international sporting event is a favorite pastime for me, and I can attest first-hand that the thrill of attending a Premier League match in England is well worth the effort.
Original publish date: August 4, 2020
Most recent update: June 19, 2024
Thanks so much for sharing this with us. I am in the completely same situation you found yourself when you wrote this (every time you said I, you could replace it with my name.).
This is a huge help and I plan to use it try to see my beloved Spurs!
Thanks Jim! Hope you’re able to get over to London soon! Spurs have a really beautiful stadium.
This was fantastic and bookmarking it! Also there are supporter clubs all around the world and sometimes they might have an “in” for tix.
Thanks for the kind words, and great shout on the supporter clubs! Haven’t done it myself but I have definitely heard of folks securing tickets that way.
The best article explaining the process I’ve seen. Thank you! Do you know how many matches typically go on sale to start? Like is it through September, October etc?
Hey Brad, I appreciate the kind words! From what I’ve seen, the Premier League will finalize match times in 4-6 week blocks, and the clubs will put tickets for those matches on sale not long after that happens. So last year, when I went to matches in early August, I bought the tickets around the first week of July.
Thanks for the great information ! Do you have any recommendation regarding buying tickets for an away team? We are planning a trip to London and would like to watch Man City Vs Arsenal. The tickets online are very pricy for that game (over $600). I know these are the top 2 teams but didn’t expect these high prices .
Hi Nick, thanks for reading! Your best bet is probably to check first with the away team (Man City in this instance?) to see how they distribute away game tickets. The club membership should give you access to that, but of course the much smaller inventory will make demand very high. Another thing to look into, as a previous commenter mentioned, is checking with supporter clubs to see if you can get access to tickets through them. Hope that helps!
This is super useful info. Thanks a lot. I’m travelling to London next month and hoping to catch a couple of games. Are you saying all tickets sold in the secondary market will require the original ticket holder’s credentials to enter the stadium?
Thanks Amit! The answer to your question is yes, depending on the club. Because in some cases members don’t have individual game tickets but rather membership passes. When someone sells you a ticket for a game, they are in essence lending you their membership pass. If you buy a ticket on the secondary market, be sure to pay attention to the method of delivery.
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Greetings! I am also a So Cal Spurs fan. This page was extremely helpful.
Does one have to buy two memberships to buy a single match hospitality tickets? Would you be nervous buying tickets through livefootballtickets?
Hey Michael, thanks for the kind words! Usually with hospitality you don’t have to be a member at all, but it depends on the club. (With Spurs I believe that’s the case.) Also, I have bought from LiveFootballTickets before and had no issue. So I would be fine going that route, though if it were me I’d do my best to buy from the club first.
Hi Edward. I got the memberships for Man City and Tottenham. I haven’t been able to get tickets so far. I see tickets in livefootball tickets and even though they are marked up they are not overly expensive. I see that you bought tickets with them. I want to try to see 2 games the weekend that I’m in London. I’m waiting on the next round of tickets to be opened but having to buy a membership to buy tickets is also expensive.
Hi Jaime — I think it’s up to you whether you think the prices you see on livefootballtickets are worth it. If you already have the memberships though, and there’s still a release coming for the matches you want, maybe see if you can buy tickets that way first?
Even if you buy secondary, having a membership usually makes it much easier for the seller to transfer their tickets to you, so it’s still worth it that way.
Thanks Edward. Yes I will keep trying on the next release. Also thanks for the tip about the transfer being easier if I have a membership. I really want to go to the games.
Great information here! I noticed some of the EPL clubs will have a direct link on their site to 3rd Party Sellers (like P1 Travel) that have seat & hotel packages. Prices seem to be high but I wonder if it’s worth the headache of managing multiple memberships and playing the waiting game? Any thoughts on that process? Again thanks for the article.
Thanks for reading, Scott! I’d certainly be more willing to go with a service that is being touted by the clubs themselves, as it’s clear they have a relationship so I’d worry less about something going wrong. I think they’re worth the peace of mind, but I’d understand if people don’t want to pay the extra cost. As for the memberships, if I decide to buy one, that’s sort of a commitment on my part to do what I can to buy tickets with it. That’s just my POV though. If an easier path to buying tickets came along that… Read more »