Bradford City fans tell us about expensive away match travel costs

The Football League and Liftshare entered into a partnership for season 15/16 to help spread the word of car sharing to fans of its 72 clubs, and give supporters a cheaper way of getting to away games.

After all, if you can’t get fan coaches or train deals, you are looking at a huge cost on top of match tickets, strips, programmes, food and more expenses when attending football matches.

The Football League recently worked out how many miles fans of all teams would have to travel in order to attend every away game of the season, and found that Carlisle United came top with 11,810 miles. That’s a lot of money on train tickets or fuel.

So through Liftshare, the League wanted to offer fans a cheaper, more sociable way to travel. All it costs is a split of the trip’s petrol money – like giving your mate a fiver for fuel after driving you somewhere. Football fans with cars can make back 100% of their petrol spend, which costs non-drivers far less than train, taxi or other public transport options. Everyone wins!

Bradford City away travel – what’s the cost?

As part of our ongoing commitment to help fans save money, and to find out what supporters think of away day travel – we spoke with Mike at the Bradford City Supporters Trust to learn more. Fans of the club came 59th in the Football league’s mileage table – so they are relatively lucky to be a less-travelled fan base.

However, Mike tells us that away matches are still expensive, “Personally I only tend to go to matches within a two hour trip. Away matches are expensive and are often seen as a full day out. There are die hard supporters who go to all away matches all over the country but it is usually too expensive for the majority.”

On Liftshare right now, there are over 500 lifts offered via Bradford by our community of over 450,000 friendly members. If you check out the prices, you’ll see they are incredibly cheap, but more convenient as you get picked up at home, then dropped off right at the game.

Car sharing can certainly help the situation, and Mike adds that Bradford fans are currently lobbying for more affordable away games for all fans, “We are campaigning as a trust for affordable away match tickets (twenty’s plenty).”

“We are also looking at reciprocal deals,” he adds. “Our club do not often organise match day travel and we are lucky that there are supporters clubs who get involved and keep the travel affordable.”

Liftshare can help, even at home games

The beauty of Liftshare is that it’s not just for away games. In fact, many members of our community only car share short distances – as the savings still add up to potentially thousands each year (Our upper-end of savings is over £2,000 a year!).

We ask Mike about how busy Bradford can get during home games, and how this impacts parking and traffic, “Even this can be a problem,” he replies.

“Bradford covers a large area and it can be difficult getting to home games even for those living in Bradford,” he goes on. “It can often mean a lot of travelling even for home games. There are also home fans from other areas of the country. Parking is usually on street which is different from other clubs.”

Parking is important, as a high volume of vehicles around matches is a key concern of Football League clubs. One aim of car sharing – besides saving you money – is to lower the volume of cars on roads. We do this by encouraging people to drive together, instead of each individually taking a passengerless car out on roads.

Liftshare has been active since 1998, has the backing of the UK’s top car insurers and is both safe and trusted. We do what we can to keep you moving for less, and to help those with cars cover their own running costs. We want to help bring the benefits of cheaper, social travel to the football community, and we’re only just getting started.

Thanks to Mike for his great input into Bradford City travel, and stay tuned for more great football fan interviews coming soon!