The FA Cup is famous for its upsets, its passion, and its ability to give lower-league clubs a rare moment in the spotlight. But beyond the drama on the pitch, there is a financial story that rarely gets enough attention. The question of whether smaller clubs should always host their higher-ranked opponents cuts to the heart of how English football distributes its wealth — and the numbers are striking.
The real cost of playing at home in the FA Cup
At first glance, earning a home tie against a Premier League giant sounds like a dream for any lower-league club. The ground buzzes, the cameras arrive, and the exposure is enormous. Mansfield Town’s draw against Arsenal, broadcast live on BBC One in front of a full One Call Stadium, was exactly that kind of occasion.
Yet the financial reality was far more sobering than the atmosphere suggested. According to football finance expert Kieran Maguire, after deducting VAT and estimated matchday costs of around £20,000, Mansfield’s gate receipts from that home fixture came to roughly £160,000. The FA then takes a 10% cut for its central pool. The remaining sum is split equally between both clubs. In practice, Mansfield and Arsenal each walked away with between £70,000 and £75,000 — a modest reward for such a high-profile occasion.
For context, that figure barely covers a week’s wages for many Premier League squads. For a League One club, it is meaningful but far from transformative. The home advantage rule, celebrated for its romance, quietly penalises the very clubs it is meant to reward.
What switching venues could have meant financially
The contrast becomes almost uncomfortable when you run the numbers for a hypothetical switch to the Emirates Stadium. A capacity crowd at Arsenal’s ground, even at reduced cup prices, would have generated a completely different financial picture for both clubs.
Kieran Maguire estimated that, using a conservative average yield of around £35 per ticket — well below the Emirates’ 2023-24 average of £84 — total receipts would have reached approximately £2.1 million. After deducting Arsenal’s higher hosting costs and the FA’s standard share, each club could realistically have expected to pocket somewhere between £800,000 and £900,000.
To understand what that means for a club like Mansfield, consider this comparison :
| Venue | Estimated total receipts | Mansfield’s estimated share |
|---|---|---|
| One Call Stadium (home) | ~£160,000 | £70,000–£75,000 |
| Emirates Stadium (away) | ~£2,100,000 | £800,000–£900,000 |
The average full-season matchday revenue for a bottom-half League One club in 2023-24 was approximately £3 million. A single game at the Emirates, under these estimates, would have represented between a quarter and a third of that annual figure. One match. One afternoon. A potentially season-changing sum.
This is not an argument against the romance of the FA Cup. It is an honest look at whether the current rules genuinely serve the interests of smaller clubs, or simply flatter them with a home fixture while limiting their earnings.
Replays, revenue, and the widening gap in English football
The debate around home advantage does not exist in isolation. It connects directly to a broader and increasingly urgent conversation about financial inequality across the English football pyramid. The scrapping of FA Cup replays added another layer of frustration for EFL clubs already struggling to keep pace with the game’s wealthiest sides.
Replays were not simply a romantic throwback. For lower-league teams, they represented a concrete and reliable revenue stream. EFL chief executive Trevor Birch made no secret of his frustration when replays were abolished, warning that this was “another traditional revenue stream lost for EFL clubs at a time when the financial gap between the biggest clubs and those further down the pyramid is widening.”
The loss of replays, combined with the constraints of the home-tie format, raises a straightforward question : is the FA Cup structured to help smaller clubs, or simply to preserve a tradition that no longer reflects financial reality ? Several issues now define this debate :
- Gate receipts at smaller grounds are structurally limited by capacity
- Hosting costs eat into already modest revenues
- The equal split of net receipts ignores the vast difference in earning potential between venues
- The removal of replays eliminated a second chance at meaningful cup income
- Lower-league clubs have no negotiating power over the current format
None of this diminishes the magic of a packed non-league or League One ground on a cold FA Cup afternoon. But sentiment and financial survival are two different things. Clubs operating on tight budgets need income, not just atmosphere.
Rethinking the home advantage rule for lower-ranked clubs
The FA Cup’s home advantage rule was designed to protect smaller clubs. The principle is sound : give the underdog the comfort of their own ground, their own fans, their own turf. But financial reality has shifted dramatically since that tradition was established.
Today, the gap between a League One club’s matchday income and that of a Premier League side is almost impossible to bridge through football alone. Giving a club like Mansfield the right to host Arsenal at the One Call Stadium feels generous — until you realise they could earn more than ten times as much from a sold-out fixture at the Emirates.
A sensible reform might offer lower-ranked clubs a genuine choice : keep the home tie and the atmosphere, or negotiate a venue switch and share a significantly larger revenue pot. Preserving tradition matters, but so does the financial health of the pyramid. The FA Cup should empower smaller clubs, not inadvertently limit them.