[Albion] Club cancelling ST due to non-attendance

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Ironically, these threads always contain fans threatening to give-up their season tickets over... admin issues.

I think this is the cause of the resale policy (which the club can't state, for obvious reasons): we have a fickle fan base.

It's proven when 1000s and 1000s of tickets end up on the exchange, even for Palace (and many others can't be bothered to list them, when they can't go).

If it was free and easy to pass on season tickets....

1000s of spare tickets would be floating around each match. "Dave's got two if you fancy it?"

The perceived value of a ticket would go down. "Yeah, £20 each will do."

1000s of fans would give up their season tickets. "I don't bother now. I'll pick up cheapies for matches I know I can go to".

More passed-on match tickets would end-up in the hands of non-Albion fans. "The Arsenal fan next door can't get tickets for the Emirates. Gave me £60 each for my tickets on Saturday!!"

Tickets would become hard-to-trace. "Gary's still banned, but I got him in."

And... zing!.... matches would no longer sell out. "I ain't paying £55 for Man U. I usually know someone who drops out".


The club is pretty good at data modelling. I'm sure Tony's fully across ticketing strategy at top level.

I can only imagine what he and the finance team thinks when it sees comments on here along the lines of:

"The club is stupid! There must have been 500 empty seats [for the sold out game] on Tuesday. If those tickets had all been passed on, they could have all been buying pies!"

I mean, honestly. It's clearly deeper than that.

So back in the real world:
• There's never been a better era to support Brighton & Hove Albion FC
• Season tickets are dirt cheap (with generous concessions)*
• You can pay over 10 months, with no additional charge
• You can easily put your ticket on the exchange for resale when a match is sold out, if you can be bothered
• You can share your season ticket with others for small fee - again, if you can be arsed
(The club has legal and PL obligations to manage and track the sale/recipients of tickets)

It's true that some genuine fans are unwittingly caught out by bullshit admin/rules, but for MOST us....? Come on! We've never had it so good!

Happy New Year!

* It cost me £108 for three tickets to see AFC Wimbledon v Doncaster (League Two) a couple of weeks ago. Fairly sure my ticket for Albon v Arsenal on Saturday works out cheaper. Let that sink in....

Nailed it

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

Club selling the seat from under the, eh, seat of a STH would clearly be an absurd precedent. We're clearly being told a small fraction of the story here

lol.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Why do you think the club is "pissing off" fans in the last 15 years ? Really ?

Anyway this predicition is pretty bleak and i'm sure was being made 10 years ago ha ! - Bolton (who were last in the PL 30 years ago) , have an average crowd in L1 this season of 22K. Plenty of L1 clubs - with similar profiles to Brighton - have had 20K+ average crowds in L1 in recent seasons.

I hope you're right. After due consideration, I suspect you are.

(Anyone spending £600 on a season ticket and using only £150 of that by attending a handful of matches, without troubling the ticket exchange, is a very silly Billy indeed.)

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

I thought we’d all found out there is nothing in the T&Cs which allow this, and there is more to this story than originally posted?

I think a lot of you had decided there was more to the story in spite of me repeatedly posting that there wasn’t.

 

[e77]

I had a hip replacement three weeks ago meaning I missed the Palace and Brentford matches and out of caution I got in touch with the club to tell them the tickets were going on the ticket exchange (plus moving me to a lower tier seat for the Arsenal match). They couldn't have been more helpful.

If you do have a medical condition stopping you attending matches then just get in touch with the club.

 

[PascalGroß Tips]

I think a lot of you had decided there was more to the story in spite of me repeatedly posting that there wasn’t.

So has there been an update from your friend following any further discussions with the club? Has the club admitted it made a mistake and gone against its own T/Cs? Does your friend know what they need to do going forward to ensure this scenario doesn't occur again?

Some answers/info like this might stop the never ending messages suggesting there's more to this than we are being told.

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

Just spoken to the S/T in holder in question, I asked if there’s been any update or any movement from the club ie reinstating his ticket that was sold without his approval.

“Nah nothing. They couldn’t give a monkeys. Just keep saying the same thing in different ways.”

So there we have it.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Yes. Its @DarrenFreemansPerm 's mate over on the similar thread and he insists that there's nothing more to the story than this - non attendance of games this season, communication pointing this out going to spam folders or not replied to and hence the games v Brentford put on the exchange without fan's permission or awareness - although following contact further games that were listed have now been delisted. .

There's also a report (via an Albion Fan FB group) of a fan who has shared something similar . (could be same ST holder ? )

Any further context come to light on either of these ? because as you say there's nothing in the Ts and Cs - unless you're ST is suspended - that suggest this is a routine sanction.

(this seems separate to the newish comms this season reminding users to share / list their ticket on the exchange or else. (ie: possible non renewal of ST, or conversations with the club when personal circumstances change in mid season due to health, finances etc) .

The facebook one that Bozza posted says the son can't attend most games because of work*, and turned up for a game and found that his ticket had been sold.

But if so it wouldn't be on his phone, would it?

Although given that he hardly ever attends maybe he doesn't check his phone to see if his ticket is there, until he's in the queue for the turnstyle.

If the ticket wasn't there how would the frisker on the turnstyle be able to tell him the ticket had been sold?

I smell an awful lot of bullshit

*clearly failing to attend and not bothering to list the ticket. Maybe if it's a cheaper kid's ticket the comfortably off parents don't care about wasting it. It is 'so much faff' after all to list an unrequired ticket, week in week out. The hassle is unbearable to contemplate. First world problems are so heart-rending, aren't they.

 

[Weststander]

Yes. 30 or so years ago it was 8000, 40 years ago it was 15K, 45-50 years ago it was 22-25K - and of course at the Withdean it was max 8K (in that time though we took 40K+ to Cardiff) .

Albion have now had 20K+ , and in last decade 30K + attendances for nearly 15 seasons in a row. Most likelty we're in PL again next season. Not sure this idea that there is only a hardcore of 12K fans still holds up. Seems incredibly pessimistic to me.

England historical attendance and performance

There must now thousands and thousands of 20somethings for example who have been watching Albion all their lives at the Amex.

Nearly anyone who has seen the Albion at the Goldstone must now be in their 40s or older.

In Sussex/the city of Brighton & Hove, the landscape has completely changed. Albion gear on kids everywhere. Not just one of those historical highs (the longest had been 76 to 83), the club is now in the soul of huge parts of the population down here. Translating into consistently high attendances, even during the fallow home game years under Potter.

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

So has there been an update from your friend following any further discussions with the club? Has the club admitted it made a mistake and gone against its own T/Cs? Does your friend know what they need to do going forward to ensure this scenario doesn't occur again?

Some answers/info like this might stop the never ending messages suggesting there's more to this than we are being told.

I was posting at the same time as you, see my other reply

My friend has just added
“Makes me sad the club I love have become the corporate machine and we are purely a seat number. They have been so unapologetic it’s unbelievable.”

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

So has there been an update from your friend following any further discussions with the club? Has the club admitted it made a mistake and gone against its own T/Cs? Does your friend know what they need to do going forward to ensure this scenario doesn't occur again?

Some answers/info like this might stop the never ending messages suggesting there's more to this than we are being told.

You suspect there may be more to this than we have been told?

There's a thought.

 

[PascalGroß Tips]

I was posting at the same time as you, see my other reply

My friend has just added
“Makes me sad the club I love have become the corporate machine and we are purely a seat number. They have been so unapologetic it’s unbelievable.”

It doesn't really answer the question "Does your friend know what they need to do going forward to ensure this scenario doesn't occur again?" does it?

It's really difficult to take your friend's comments at face value - when he's calling them a 'corporate machine' etc, when you see posts like the one from @e77 that paints a completely different picture.

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

You suspect there may be more to this than we have been told?

There's a thought.

Which there isn’t, but do carry on.

 

[PascalGroß Tips]

You suspect there may be more to this than we have been told?

There's a thought.

Maybe... just a little

 

[Justice]

In Sussex/the city of Brighton & Hove, the landscape has completely changed. Albion gear on kids everywhere. Not just one of those historical highs (the longest had been 76 to 83), the club is now in the soul of huge parts of the population down here. Translating into consistently high attendances, even during the fallow home game years under Potter.

Yet we can’t sell out a game against Palace

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

It doesn't really answer the question "Does your friend know what they need to do going forward to ensure this scenario doesn't occur again?" does it?

It's really difficult to take your friend's comments at face value - when he's calling them a 'corporate machine' etc, when you see posts like the one from @e77 that paints a completely different picture.

He knows he must list his ticket on the exchange even if it’s a last minute change of circumstance, he failed to do so twice IIRC.
You can take his comments however you like as it’s perfectly viable that two people may have received completely different levels of service.
Quite honestly it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. He knows what has happened, he knows how he’s been dealt with by the club.
I’ve posted countless times that there’s nothing more to the story, my friend has given his most recent and likely final update.

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

Maybe... just a little

f*** it, I’ll type it again.

There’s nothing more to it.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Which there isn’t, but do carry on.

Edit: the message here may be in error because I have conflated top cases, the one mentioned by the OP and the one mentioned by Bozza from Facebook. It nevertheless applies to the Facebook case, which seems naive at best.

As noted elsewhere it is in the terms and conditions that persistent non use of a ticket will trigger a response from the club.

In your pal's case, their hardly ever attending and never listing the ticket for resale pattern of behaviour would presumably have ceased had the warning emails from the club not gone to trash.

So your friend needs to argue they didn't know the terms and conditions, didn't attend very often, and didn't list the ticket for resale because they had a good reason to not do so, and then didn't occasionally check their email trash in case legit messages had ended up there, like most of us do.

Sounds like a terrible and unfortunate series of coincidences. And ultimately a narrative that would be extremely hard to make persuasive to the club (which has doubtless heard it all before). Especially if the narrative is infused with a spoonful of 'you don't care about us fans anymore' garnish.

 

[Weststander]

Yet we can’t sell out a game against Palace

Live on TV? We’re a lazy supporter base when that temptation’s there, a 5m commute from the fridge to sofa. I was asked to do that for the Brentford game with just an hour til KO …. it was alluring.

But still a remarkably high baseline. What were the real home attendances (non lockdowns) when Potter delivered years of Amex losses and draws)? 25k plus?

 

[Wozza]

Yet we can’t sell out a game against Palace

It was sold out, wasn't it? Or close?

There were definitely 1500+ season ticket holders who decided they had better things to do, were working etc, and put their tickets on the exchange.

Would be an interesting venn diagram showing these folk and the people who complain about the club's rules....