Man Utd's oldest fans have been hit hardest by season ticket prices for 2025/2026 and are unhappy with the club.
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Pensioner concessions have been reduced.(Image: 2025 Getty Images)
Manchester United had just won back-to-back games and there was a whiff of optimism in the air, so there was probably no better time to announce season ticket prices for 2025/2026.
On Monday, United revealed their season ticket prices for next season and they seemed reasonable at first glance. The majority of season tickets were raised by five per cent and prices for Under-16s were frozen, but the devil is in the details and pensioner supporters have been hit the hardest.
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In previous years, pensioner season tickets would be discounted by 50 per cent, but United confirmed discounts would be reduced and Sir Jim Ratcliffe is facing backlash from fans.
Senior concessions have been halved and will now be offered at 25 per cent off, instead of 50 per cent. United also confirmed the age to be eligible for a senior ticket will be moved in line with the state pension age of 66.
Club sources have said "a few thousand" season tickets will be affected by the halving of pensioner discount, although it seems like it could be more, judging from the widespread reaction on social media and emails sent to the Manchester Evening News complaining about the ticket hike.
United have also argued that maintaining the 50 per cent discount was "not justifiable" due to the growing proportion of season ticket holders within the senior category, and that those who were given pensioner discount from the 2022/23 season had only received a 25 per cent discount.
The bottom line is that many pensioners whose discount has been halved will walk away. Some will give it up because they cannot afford it and others will feel they can't stomach the rise.
United fans are unhappy with ticket prices.(Image: Alex Livesey/Getty Images.)
Tony Christian, who has attended Old Trafford since 1962, is among those supporters who are considering not renewing their season ticket. He is "disgusted" by the decision to reduce the pensioner discount, which will increase some fans' tickets by around £300 for next season.
"I'm in the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand and near the halfway line. They're really good seats and there are loads of people around me who have the 25-year name badges on their seats," he told the MEN.
"I was speaking to someone at the game a few months back and I said raising tickets to £66 is testing the water. I said he'll cherry-pick what he can get away with and we'll be in the firing line because we're getting a price that you could get double for if getting rid of every old person.
"I think he's done data analysis and looked at how many people are old-age pensioners who are getting the seat for half the price. He's thought, 'If I could persuade them to pay a lot more, great, but if they drop out, I'll get full price. We've got an eight-year waiting list, and that could fill them up'.
"It's almost like Ineos accountancy euthanasia. He talks like a ruthless businessman and not about anything to do with the supporters and why the club has been successful in the past because of that loyalty, and the fact that for 12 years since Ferguson retired, we've had crap managers and crap teams, and it's still full every week.
"I've got George Best's debut programme since 1963 and I've got the programme from the '68 final at Wembley, but if I look back, it wasn't all fun and games. The fans have stuck through thick and thin."
Many local fans feel United don't care about them. They have accused the club of contempt for its bedrock of support and believe they would rather sell tickets to tourists for a higher price.
Ratcliffe's changes in the last 12 months have been heavily criticised, and fans have scoffed at his penny-pinching at a time when the 72-year-old has made multi-million-pound mistakes in the board room.
United paid £4.1m to sack Dan Ashworth after five months.
(Image: Getty)
"Let's say 10,000 fans have been affected by this and they charge them £300 more each," Christian said. "They're making £3million and that's 10 weeks of Casemiro's wage and less than the £4m that was required to pay off Dan Ashworth after giving him a job for just five months.
"I think a lot of the Premier League clubs when United put up the price of the tickets because they know they can sell them. That's one thing, then Spurs last season didn't offer a pensioner discount, and I thought Ratcliffe was going to see that and think we should do the same.
"It's death by 1,000 cuts. They've lost the soul of the club by doing what they're doing and the trick with the juniors is, if you've got a junior who is 11 or 12, you will pay full price in four years.
"Freeze them, collect the father's money and get the juniors addicted to United, like my dad with me, then they have to pay full price. They've probably done analysis on pensioners, and they'll know how many more there could be in the ground in a few years' time, and they will carry on going until they die.
"A full pension is £844 a month and now tickets are a month's pension for people. I had a good job and, thankfully, I can afford it, but I'm still disgusted by it. I said to my wife, if he does this dirty trick then I'm not going to renew because we've watched rubbish for the last few seasons.
"He shouldn't have kept Ten Hag in charge last summer, he shouldn't have given him a contract extension because it then costs more to get rid of him and they shouldn't have allowed him to buy more players in the summer transfer window. Ratcliffe has presided over this wastage.
"Then they had to buy Amorim out. Given the situation and trying to fund a new stadium, you could four or five years of turmoil, he won't want to pay Mainoo, they'll sell him and sell Garnacho.
"He's not criticised the Glazers and he's doing lots of things to build his share value back up, but he's ruining the heart of the club. There's loads of old people near me. The guy in front is 72.
"He used to hitch-hike from Lincoln when he was a lad, and now he gets the train. I've seen him at semi-finals in the 90s and in Barcelona for the Champions League final in 1999. He's now saying he's forking out £180 to get to the game and a lot of people on a standard pension won't be able to go."
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Christian continued: "Ratcliffe is not going to change his mind because that would mean showing weakness, but what he's doing is purely dirty financial tricks, and they need to publish the exact numbers of people over 65. I didn't realise last year that the fans who had just turned 65 had only received 25 percent off their season tickets, and we carried on with the 50 percent off.
"They're looking at us and thinking 'we know you've paid full price for 40 years, but we don't want you having 50 per cent off for the next 15 years and we don't care because we have a list of people waiting to get tickets'. They slid this under the radar when it was announced this week.
"And it's for a stadium that's past its best in a lot of places. They're just exploiting supporters now."