The story of the disappearing away seat allocation.
Posted on August 10th, 2010 | 148 Comments |
There is one word I have missed out of all that though: Loyal. I can remember scenes from last season where we took 7,000 to Barnsley, 5,500 to Nottingham Forest among others. Clubs cashed in our away following, and rightly so. Why not?
We sold out practically every away end last season, and most of them gave us roughly the same amount of tickets as teams in the Premier League do. The demand is there. Newcastle have a massive fanbase from all over the country, all over the world in fact, and quite a few of those don’t get the chance to go to St James’ Park very often, for differing reasons, which means an away trip, to perhaps a more local team, is the more viable option.
I tend to do most of my supporting away from St James’ Park. A lot of it was to do with protesting about Mike Ashley, my own little stance against the way things were/are being run, you can delete as appropriate. Because of that though, I found myself supporting the team by going to a lot more away games last year.
Getting tickets has never been a problem for me. As most of you are aware, I am currently exiled somewhere in the middle of the country which means a season ticket is not viable for me so I have to get by with my membership, which has served me well until now. However, I may need to call on some family favours for tickets in future if the forst two away games of the season are anything to go by.
I won’t be at Old Trafford as I have to be at work, but I will be at Wolves, the away game after that. Tickets sold out pretty quickly, quicker than usual, quicker than the last time we were in the Premier League in fact, which made me wonder why? Someone said something to me about us having reduced away allocations, which made no sense to me, so I have done a bit of digging on the subject.
Now I can only account for the first two away matches of the season, but it certainly does seem like we have a reduction in our ticket allocation, and it is our club who are reducing them.
The regular allocation for Old Trafford is over 3,000, yet we have only taken 1,800 tickets according to Manchester United. Wolves is a similar story as the club have decided to only take up the option of having the same amount of tickets as a Bolton or a Wigan comapred to the usual full allocation that we would normally take. Why?
As highlighted earlier, the demand is there for tickets, and the club are doing themselves out of money as they get a ‘booking fee’ for every ticket sold. So why is this being reduced? I don’t know is the answer and I can only speculate on it.
There is no police advice or history of troubles within the two fixtures in question to justify the reduction, which rules that reason out, so why is the ticket supply being strangled by our own club?
Now it may just be for these two games as the club try and work out how many of the allocation to take at away grounds for the new season, but surely they should know they we will pretty much take all tickets that are thrown at us?
I don’t want to sound down on the club, but it is poor form from them and I can only think that money is playing some part in these decisions. The extra allocation that got turned down for Manchester United consisted of tickets that would cost £50 a piece. The club would have had to buy that allocation from Manchester United and then sell them from our club which is how they get the money back. If we don’t sell however many tickets we take then the club still has to pay the home club regardless. That is how it works.
Now pardon me for being cynical, but by restricting the ticket allowance it would mean that the club outlays less money on the initial ticket purchase which has a knock on effect down the line. Season ticket holders may be ok and will get their away tickets, but what about those people who have paid £20 for their memberships in the hope of getting an away seat here and there? If the tickets aren’t there then they won’t get a ticket, and a lot of those £20 memberships become redundant.
If anyone can think of a more logical reason then I would like to hear it. There is absolutely no reason for the club, our club, to reduce our away ticket allocations. We sell them, it’s fact, proven over the last god knows how many years, and to try to reduce our away following to that of a Bolton or a Wigan is disgraceful. I can ignore many things, but denying the fans the chance to see their team is something I can’t stomach.
As you can tell, I’m really not happy about this, but only time will tell if it is a permanent thing or a temporary measure.
I, for one, hope it is the latter!
“Newcastle fans get called all sorts of things, some of them less than complimentary. Deluded, impatient, demanding, passionate, loyal, partisan, thick, stupid are just a few tags that I have read about us.
There is one word I have missed out of all that though: Loyal.”
Haha, sorry but what a gaffe!