An interesting Chelsea fans report.
Of particular interest I think for NUFC fans, is when it comes to parallels with concerns about the Newcastle United membership system and potential issues.
This Chelsea fans report giving plenty food for thought.
The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust having produced their report after surveying fans this summer.
This is what the Chelsea Supporter’s Trust had to say:
‘Ticketing remains one of the most important and problematic issues that Chelsea FC (CFC) supporters face on a
weekly basis.
With approximately 95,000 members vying for 5,000-6,000 general admission tickets for Premier League fixtures and an
extremely high Season Ticket renewal rate, tickets are more limited than ever before.
This has been exacerbated recently as the number of tickets in General Admission areas has unfortunately dropped.’
These were some of the key recommendations from the Chelsea Supporters Trust survey
Set out a clear and achievable plan on how the club intends to attract and retain the next generation of
younger supporters.
Significantly improve the number of members who see the membership as good value for money from 26%.
Chelsea FC to become actively more transparent regarding ticketing issues and improve communication
between Ticket Office and supporters.
Chelsea to significantly improve communication on how they are preventing and pursuing tickets being listed
and sold on secondary selling sites.
Having checked, it looks like Chelsea fans pay £35 for an adult membership, two quid less than the £37 Newcastle fans are paying for the 2023/24 season.
On the figures the Chelsea Supporter’s Trust are quoting, around 95k members and only 5,000-6,000 tickets available to them for each Premier League match, if all the members apply every PL game, then on average each member would be getting to one Premier League match per season.
With the Newcastle United memberships this season, there is zero transparency so far.
We have no idea of how many NUFC members there are so far and how many tickets are up for grabs each match.
I think at the very least the Newcastle United owners should be giving some indication of these numbers.
Last season NUFC stopped selling any more memberships once they reached a certain (unspecified) sales level, it was deemed unfair on those who had already bought memberships, to sell any more. As it would make the chances of getting tickets too low if they kept selling them.
This time, the Newcastle United owners have indicated that there will be no upper limit on how many memberships are sold.
Of the people I know, many were NUFC members last season and were successful in getting tickets the majority of the time. None of these people (eleven I have checked up on) were successful for Villa tickets in the recent ballot.
Do I suddenly know a lot of unlucky people, or have the chances of getting tickets massively gone down, if you are a member?
As others have said, as last season went on, it did appear there were less and less tickets available to members. The same place in the queue for later matches would see you with far less choice of tickets when you got on the NUFC site, compared to games earlier on in 2022/23. Whilst of course you ended up having to be higher up the queue as the season went on, to get any ticket(s).
The general consensus / belief was that NUFC members were getting less and less tickets because the club were selling more and more via lucrative ticket, hotel and accommodation packages via club partners such as Sports Breaks. Whether to neutrals / football tourists, or to fans of Newcastle and whichever other club they happened to be playing in that particular match.
Was this true? Who knows. The club didn’t deny it and nor do we have any clarity now.
What I do know is that when 2023/24 NUFC memberships went on sale, there were crazy numbers of people queuing online to buy them. The online club stats showed over 100,000 had been queuing at some point just on that first day of selling them. Not all of them would have bothered staying in a queue, then not all who got on the ticketing site eventually would have bought them.
However, fair to say that tens of thousands of them would have bought them. I bought six on behalf of myself, family and friends, all of us renewing from last season, six is the maximum you can apply together as a group in each ballot. Not everybody would have bought six but fair to say, very few billy no mates’ would have bought just one.
I would be amazed if there haven’t been more NUFC memberships already sold than the 95,000 quoted above for Chelsea.
I have seen some claims of 250,000+ sold but I doubt it very much. There again, who knows?
Unless the Newcastle United owners make public what the running total of memberships is AND the number of tickets that are going into the ballot each Premier League match, we are totally in dark. Which of course is what cynics would claim is exactly the intention.
For me personally, paying £37 for an NUFC membership, I think you should have then an expectation of getting to at least four or five PL matches if applying for all 19. At an absolute minimum, say three.
However, if say there was 100,000 NUFC memberships already sold and only say 5,000 tickets available per game, if everybody applied every match, some members wouldn’t get a single PL ticket all season.
At the very least, surely the Newcastle United owners have to make clear to anybody considering becoming a member now, as to exactly what their chances are before paying their cash.
Maybe there is a load of unnecessary panic and simple myself and the other members I know were just very unlucky, that there are only 16,000 NUFC members and 15,000 tickets each PL match, we were all amongst the unlucky 1,000 for Villa.
Either way, we should be told.
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