Away Day on a Budget: What a Trip to All 92 Grounds Actually Costs

There's a reason people who've done the 92 don't give you the full number straight away. They'll tell you it's doable, that it's worth it, that you should absolutely do it. And then, when you ask what it cost, there's a pause.

The groundhopping community has been at it for decades, chasing grounds, comparing terrace opinions, arguing about whether you need a competitive game or whether a preseason friendly counts. The honest figure, for the 2026/27 season done on a proper budget, is somewhere between £7,000 and £10,000. That's the real version, not the one where you park outside every ground and eat a Greggs on the way home.

People get there in different ways, savings, Trustly casinos, splitting it across a season with a mate, but the ones who've done it all say the same thing: it's the planning that decides whether it stays manageable or spirals.

Four divisions. Twenty Premier League grounds, twenty-four Championship, twenty-four in League One, twenty-four in League Two. The ticket prices aren't as brutal across all of them as people tend to assume.

Premier League aways are where it hurts most, £30 to £45 on average, more at a handful of grounds, making you feel every penny of it. Championship drops to £20 to £30 most weeks. Leagues One and Two are where the game starts feeling different again.

Tenner to twenty quid in most places, sometimes less if the club's running a deal. Work through every ground and you're looking at roughly £1,800 to £2,500 on tickets alone. Not the number that breaks the budget. That comes next.

The Odyssey… To Get There

Train prices in 2026 are not your friend. A return to Carlisle without an advance booked weeks out will run you £70 from London before you've eaten anything. The advance prices make a real difference, book eight weeks out and the same journey comes down to £25. Exeter's the same. Barrow's worse.

The obvious move is to drive everywhere and split the petrol, and for anything within an hour and a half it works fine. The midweek games are where it collapses: 7:45 kick-offs, two hundred miles away, finished at half nine, work the next morning. That's when the overnights start adding up.

Most people who've done the full 92 arrive at the same system eventually, driving the close ones, advance trains for the longer trips, and trying to cluster the geography so they're not crossing the country twice in a week.

Get it right and transport lands somewhere around £2,500 to £3,500 for the season. Get it wrong, which is easy to do, and that number doubles. This is where most people's budgets fall apart.

Overnights: Groundhopper’s Worst Enemy

Some grounds you're just not getting home from the same day and there's no point pretending otherwise. Exeter, Plymouth, Carlisle, Barrow: Tuesday nights at any of those mean either driving back at midnight or booking a room.

Travelodge or Premier Inn booked well ahead will run £50 to £70 a night in most of those towns. Add food and a couple of pints and you're pushing £100 before you've got home.

Ten to fifteen overnights are probably realistic depending on where you're based. £700 to £1,000 in accommodation on top of everything else. And then every match day has its own costs beyond the ticket: programme, pie, a drink before kick-off.

Call it £20 to £30 per ground, which is conservative if you're spending time in the town rather than just ticking a box and leaving. Some of those places are genuinely worth an afternoon.

The Actual Total

Tickets, travel, overnights, food, the bits in between: everything together puts a proper 92-ground season at somewhere between £7,000 and £10,000. Spread across a full season it's manageable. Do it right and it doesn't feel like money going out, it feels like money going somewhere.

The thing people who've done it keep coming back to is the lower league grounds. Not the big Premier League stadiums, which are fine and worth seeing but rarely surprise you. Gresty Road, Brunton Park, Holker Street. Grounds where the facilities are held together with goodwill and the away end is a terrace behind a goal.

The budget forces you down there, and that turns out to be where most of the good stories come from. The number tells you what it costs. It doesn't quite tell you what you get.