Very rough and ready. I'll read through and try and tidy them up a bit later...
Fans’ Forum 25/01/22
Paul Barber (PB): Delighted to keep ST prices as they have been for the past few seasons. Important at a time of uncertainty for people. Tweak a few bits and pieces too.
Fan Advisory Board - extend fan dialogue. Add to day to day conversations. Engage formally, record minutes and circulate them. The eight fans to be a sounding board for other fans. JG will chair the board, as her team interacts with fans 365 days a year. Fans will also attend a full board meeting once a year.
Create structured dialogue.
Tracey Crouch recommended other steps, but Albion already ahead of many of those things.
Keegan Hutton: Do you think Brighton will have an open training session where fans can see the players train.
PB: Simple answer - yes, as soon as possible, Covid regulations stop us right now. If we can’t do it soon, we’ll aim to do it pre-season.
Tony Noble: (First time STH 66-y-o, supported Albion since he was 11.) Thoroughly enjoyed this year. Part of the ground can’t be used for parking. We come from East Grinstead on the bus. Ladies loos in the ESU are constantly blocked.
PB: Ladies loos - will ask Dave Baker (Head of maintenance) to take a look.
Parking: we don’t own the main part of the car park. It’s owned by Mr Bennett who leased it to the club for matchday parking. Mr B has submitted planning to build student accommodation on the land and is not prepared to allow club to use it whilst planning going on. Club has had to move a lot of people who did park there previously. Inconvenient, but club has a good relationship with Mr B. If he gets planning, club won’t be able to use it, although hope to get a bit of it back. If he doesn’t get planning, club will be speaking to him. Fewer cars in the area help the buses come and go.
Tony Noble: Attendance figure is not a true figure of people in the ground, is it?
PB: We’ve done it throughout the Amex period. It’s a sold tickets number, and is how the Premier League report this. In the 70s and 80s, it relied someone pressing a turnstyle pedal and may not have been accurate.
John Hewitt: Recognising revenue raised by broadcasting on Sky and BT, fans need to know when games are being played as soon as possible. We are due to travel to Newcastle on an unknown day of four less than 5 weeks away.
PB: It’s a minimum of one month. Balancing act if tv companies would go any earlier than that. They may not want to select earlier as they want to tell the story of the league at the time, and it may change if the select too early. Also impacts the club in terms of travel and securing hotel rooms. March fixtures announced in the next 24-48 hours, 4-5 weeks ahead of the first fixture. It’s not perfect, but it’s a compromise we have to accept currently.
Raymond Wright: Slightly confused between the ST sharing scheme and upgrading tickets. Is upgrading separate from sharing?
Jenny Gower: Yes. Sharing can only be done with anyone of the same age category as you. Upgrading is for concession tickets, and will cost the match ticket price less the pro rata season ticket match price.
RW: It’s easier to take someone NOT in your age group than someone in your age group.
JG: It depends. It can be quite expensive to upgrade a ticket, eg for a concession ticket to an adult ticket for Chelsea.
RW: Worrying trend of violence and people running on the pitch. Seems to be happening over the last few weeks. Why is it happening?
PB: I don’t know exactly why. Maybe some covid frustration after being cooped up for a period of time, having had a few drinks and not being able to contain your frustration. The PL and the police are meeting to see if stricter sanctions may be required. It’s stupidity and not a risk worth taking for a fan. We need to keep people safe. We have a legal obligation to protect people in their place of work, and that is what the pitch and surrounding area are.
It is a tiny, tiny minority. Most people go to meet friends, watch football and have a great time.
Alex Cowling: I particularly like how easy it is to have access to you. Will that continue with the FAB.
PB: I’m going to shut it down - I’ve had enough (joking). It’s something I’ve always done. It’s not something every club CEO does, and I respect that, but it’s what I do. You may not like the answer I give you, but I will give you an honest answer. We’re doing things in the best long-term interest of the club.
AC: Website said we’d get briefings from the FAB four times a season.
JG: We need to fine tune the details as to how we will communicate. We need to allow people to put themselves forward and begin schedule meetings, with the first one around the end of this season or beginning of the next and then write-up what is discussed.
AC: How to apply?
JG: That will be published in the coming weeks.
PB: This will be a great opportunity for people to get exposure to the people who run the club. Some people seem to think I do everything, but it’s not like that. We have a team of senior managers who are specialists in their area. The FAB will be able to quiz those people and find out why things happen. We’ll then make those minutes available for others to read. Across our senior management team, there’s over 100 years of experience running football clubs. We don’t sit there and think “how can we make fans unhappy with the things we do”. The FAB will lift the lid on how we make some of the decisions we do.
Alicia: I’ve been really worried about the gaffer since he came down with Covid.
PB: I want him back as soon as possible. I think Bjorn does too after the pressure he was under on Sunday. He’s doing OK. Although he’s missed a game, it wasn’t a bad time to become infected with the break coming up. He’s been in touch with Bjorn, Bruno and Crofty.
Alicia: What about Lewis?
PB: He was on the bench and doing well, but he’s got some lads playing well in front of him right now.
Alicia: Match attendance - do we have to show proof of a negative lateral flow to attend?
PB: We have a PL meeting tomorrow where we’ll vote on the requirement for the next round of matches. My gut feel is there will be no requirement for covid passports, but that comes down to the vote tomorrow.
Ian Cuthbert: As someone who has followed games from Edinburgh since 1975, I’m stunned at how things have progressed. Delighted to be able to get tickets home and away as an MyAlbion+ member. Worried about Newcastle scheduling, as I have to put things in place. As there are a few Scottish Albion fans, will we ever have a pre-season game in Scotland.
PB: Great to hear a Scottish accent, and we’ve got groups of fans in lots of countries now. We have a relationbship with HIbs, and we played Aberdeen a few years ago. A game against Hibs is a possibility. We do have a loose attangement to either play at Hibs or host them at the Amex.
IC: Congratulate David Weir on his job.
PB: DW is doing a great job and deserves his promotion. He’s a great character to have around the club and fits our club culture very well. He’s done a great job as a loan manager and is very well respected in the club.
Annette Kendrick: From my son and grandson: they can’t get travel to evening matches, can they have a rebate?
JG: They could buy to the edge of the travel zone, and then use match ticket to cover the rest of the journey.
AK: How do you do sharing with a junior in your F&F that doesn’t have their own account.
JG: You can setup a junior digital account for them, or use an email address that you have access to, as the email address does need to be unique. When you’ve done that you can login and share the ticket.
Paul Macdonald: Can we have an explanation on the Spurs allocation. The website said we would have up to 9,000 tickets and some fans were holding on for the top blocks so they could sit with their mates. I think we would have sold out 9,000, or closer to 9,000 than 5,700.
PB: At the Amex we’ve never sold out close to 9,000 away tickets. The closest we’ve come is just under 7,000 at Milton Keynes at 3pm on a Saturday in Spring when we were chasing promotion and tickets were a tenner. Most in FA Cup are around 6,000 to Man Utd and Liverpool.
We were getting a lot of emails from fans about the kickoff time, the problem with trains and it’s on terrestiral TV. If we took all 9,000 and didn’t sell them, we’d be faced with a bill of tens of thousands of pounds.
The question on communications is fair, but consider the other way round. We announce 5,700 tickets, they sell out quickly and we get more tickets and people then complain that we didn’t tell them we were getting more tickets as they would have waited to buy if they’d known.
PM: Were you surprised how quickly they sold?
PB: They didn’t - they sold quite slowly. If they’d sold quickly, they wouldn’t have gone to a member’s sale.
The average away allocation we’ve had in the Premier League is about 2,300. In the Championship it was about 1,700. We take good numbers, but we don’t have any data that suggests we would take 9,000 fans to this game.
PM: I feel for those with low loyalty points - how will they get to games?
PB: Only four away games this season sold out to STHs. There have been plenty of opportunities for fans to buy away tickets this season.
We had 35 complaints. If we multiply that by 30, that would be 1,000 extra tickets we may have sold. That means we’d have lost £50,000. We’re losing tens of millions of pounds a year, we can’t afford to just write off £50,000.
Paul Camillin: There was a desire in the club to take 9,000. We didn’t just take the easy option and take the smaller number. The sales we had didn’t give us the confidence we could have taken any more.
PB: And we had to factor in extra time and penalties and what that would mean for travel home.
JG: We tried to work with Spurs and do a sale or return, but Spurs didn’t want to do that - which is within the competition rules. The pace of sales was not quick enough, with our modelling, to believe we could have sold 9,000 tickets.
Spurs have 3 home games in a week, and they have a cup buy scheme for season ticket holders. They wanted to offer those extra tickets to their season ticket holders.
I don’t think we’d have sold 9,000. I think we’d have been in a nomans land in the middle (of 5,700 and 9,000).
PB: Tottenham and the FA were willing to move the kick-off time, but ITV were not willing. I thought if we could get it moved to just 7pm it would have helped people, but ITV weren’t willing to do that. When we enter a competition we have to accept the rules and TV schedules, but we do put ourselves in the place of our fans and we try to do our best for them.
PC: Worth touching on West Brom - it might have been moved after tickets were already sold?
PB: It’s easy for people to think we don’t try our best for the fans, but we always try our hardest to maximise live fan attendance. And the TV companies want that too. Sometimes we have to reach compromises that aren’t ideal for everybody.
Andrew Garfield: I asked before about lactose free milk. I’ve asked and it’s still not being provided (in the North). My other half has to bring her own.
PB: Leave that with us. There have been some shortages of some products - it may be that, but we’ll get it checked out for you.
AG: We went to Leicester and the atmosphere was great.
PB: Away support this season has been fantastic. Our record on the road has been good, which helps, and it’s great to get a late goal to turn a defeat into a draw or win.
AG: How many tickets for Watford?
JG: Less than 3,000 because of the capacity. I think it was around 2,300, and it’s always popular and sold out to season ticket holders.
AG: A lot of people in the North aren’t wearing masks.
PB: All we can do is recommend people wear them. Whatever happens at the PL meeting tomorrow I suspect we’ll still be recommending it when people are close together. Some people claim exemptions
Alan York: Post-covid I’ve lost 24 kilos. Did you slide extra seats into some rows - it feels quite cosy where we are.
PB: In some places, yes. When the stadium was built, we allowed more shoulder room than many stadiums, but the seats were on rails to allow them to be moved. The board sat in a row that had been arranged in the new setup and none of us could really tell the difference. In the winter when people are wearing thick coats, maybe it feels a bit more snug.
AY: It seems to be taking longer to get out of the coach park now. Sometimes up to 45 minutes.
PB: Some people are using car parks down by Virgin Active which comes by. We don’t have control of the public highways unfortunately and we rely on people letting our buses out.
AY: We didn’t go to Leicester, was it moved to a Sunday for a reason.
PB: Yes, because Leicester Tigers were playing at home on Saturday and Leicester asked if we could move it.
AY: Why do we let away fans drink so much after games - we’re always hustled away quickly.
PB: We’re just being nice, letting people have a drink if they like, and it helps us by slowing down the flow of people from the ground.
AY: We’ve been doing very well, and it’s come as a bit of a surprise.
PB: We try to keep on improving. Sometimes that may not always be obvious, but we’ve been confident behind the scenes that we’ve been getting better season after season.
Drew: I’m one of those fans who hasn’t built up loyalty points. I was brought up in Brighton but my parents hated football. I was a bit disappointed about the Spurs game. Question: Lots of reports of homophobic abuse recently, particularly at Leicester. It’s getting worse across many fanbases. Is it something you are raising with other clubs:
PB: It’s depressing. I heard it at Leicester. Jenny has meetings with her peer group as does Ady Morris. Other clubs are supportive. Catching people in the act and having police willing to act does not always happen. Sometimes though an operational decision has been taken to identify them, gather evidence and look to make an arrest later on when it’s less confrontational.
People said the same with pitch invaders, saying we didn’t chase them. We do get them every time, even if they make it back to the crowd.
On homophobic behaviour we will keep trying and keep educating, but some people do not get it unfortunately,
Mike Costello: Can you update us on Dan Ashworth?
PB: I hope Dan stays for as long as possible. There will always be options for our best staff and players. We can’t control that. Our policy when approached by other clubs is to allow them to have that conversation. Often, they go and see what is on offer and come back to the Albion and stay.
MC: Is it time to have a re-think of the Crystal Palace visiting debacle. 82 people on my bus thought it was a complete shambles. If it was left how it normally is
PB: Palace is a tricky one. We have to try and keep people safe, and we have to consider what will happen if people are allowed to do what they want. We also have a special train for the Palace fans, and getting them to that train without confrontation. Ady Morris and the police sit down and work out a plan to do that. It’s difficult to do that without some inconvenience.
Jen and I have sat down and watched every minute of every CCV footage and we know why some of the bottlenecks and congestion happened.
Many grounds have numerous exits into many streets. We don’t have all those disbursement points. We only really have three ways out which gives us a challenge.
Every time we put the plan in place, we look to see how we can improve it for the next time. We will sit down with the police and look to see how we can improve it next time. We only get to do this once a year, so we don’t get the chance to try it out first.
MC: Can you keep Palace fans in, for an hour?
PB: You can only detail people in a football stadium for what is a reasonable period of time. And we have a train schedule to fit in with, that has to fit into the national rail timetable. When the train arrives, we have to get 2,000 Palace fans onto it as quickly as possible. Ideally, I’d like to use buses for them all, but that’s not practical.
Harry Tripp: Armed forces, blue light cards, NHS: Villa did a subsidised ticket for those in the armed forces. Would the Albion consider doing this?
JG: We’ve worked with blue-light card, and as part of the pandemic response we committed to giving away 1,000 tickets. We also work with “tickets for troops” and we’ve given them an allocation to them for the last eight years or so. We use the central organisations as they have systems to validate who people are.
HT: When are you going to start showing Sky Sports in concourses again?
PB: Very soon I hope. Tomorrow’s PL meeting may allow that.
Name?: We drive down from near Heathrow, park in Mill Road 2.5 hours before kick-off. When Pyecombe is open that’s even better. I meet up with friends at the game. We often go abroad to Germany etc In these other countries, they make a lot better use of outdoor space eith bars, tents and toilets etc.
PB: Yes - Covid and losses got in the way a bit. But we do have plans to make a covered area behind the North Stand to allow people to have a beer and a burger with friends, maybe somewhere for kids to run around a bit as we know it’s not easy for families when you arrive early with kids. It will have toilets too. We want to do it properly, so we just need to find the money.
Andrew Garfield: We’re in the North Stand beside the goal. Every time it rains it gets flooded down there. The rain just sits there and we get wet feet.
PB: We’ll raise this with Dave Baker to look at.
AG: Any plans to extend the roof on the North.
PB: No - it would have needed to be done when the stadium was built.
Mark Davey: Tweaking of the ticket sharing system. Last year initial feedback was positive, but then it became negative. Feedback on the new changes seem to be negative on social media:
PB: Thousands of people have signed up and use it. It was a difficult thing to introduce. Season ticket discounts are personal to the holder, digital ticketing made sharing difficult.
The scheme was designed to give people flexibility for around £1 a match. We want to know who the tickets are going to. We have 5,000 matchday tickets to sell so it makes sense for us that
Scheme was intended to be as flexible as possible. We wanted to give people the choice to join or not as we didn’t think it was fair to charge everyone for sharing if they were going to attend every game.
The changes we think address the complaints we received.
We’ll always look to take feedback and improve where we can, but there are always limits to that.
JG: We would like the system to be friendlier, but it is an out of the box system, but we try to make it as friendly as we can. Some clubs offer a more open sharing scheme but some clubs don’t offer a discount on
PB: The scheme isn’t about profiteering, it actually costs the club money. The people who receive sharing tickets are those who may otherwise buy a single matchday ticket. Ticket sales have gone down at a time when we have more tickets to sell. People ask about why the ticket exchange opens later now. It’s opening later because matchday sales have gone down. The cost of the scheme, to the club, could be £2m in terms of tickets we’re now not selling.
We have no evidence that people who come to a one off game with a mate become season ticket holders. Most new season ticket holders are club members. We’re still growing our fanbase. We’re in a different stage of club development to the likes of Spurs.
Kevin Claxton: On behalf of the ladies in my family, who are STHs - they find the wine undrinkable, particularly the white wine. Can’t they spend £1 more for a better bottle of wine.
PB: The catering manager, Andy Perkins, has had a torrid time. Those mini bottles of wine have been in short supply. We’ll see if he can source something better.
Peter: It’s amazing to watch what we’re watching today. We’ve never had such a fantastic setup players, manager and owner. Interested in safe standing. We were in safe standing at Chelsea. Tottenham and West Ham have it as well. The atmosphere is better than sitting. We’re not hearing anything from the club on safe standing.
PB: We’ve not been negative on safe standing. We’ve consulted in questionnaires and an open meeting on it. We can’t expand capacity with it and people can’t stand where they want. If there’s an appetite for it we’ll consider it. Most of the North Stand stands already - will we get a major atmosphere lift from it?
We’ve only had one incident with people standing at the Amex in 10 years, and it was an away fan in the South Stand who stood on a seat. Rails will make it safer.
There are some people who have bought into the North Stand who don’t want to stand, so it would have to be lateral, ie across the back rows.
It also requires Tony’s investment, which will not bring in any extra revenue and may not improve the atmosphere at all.
Peter: We’ve given the away team the south stand. It gives the away team an advantage.
PB: The problem we have, as beautifully designed as it is was designed to put away fans in the south stand and provides access to the coach park. We have to be able to provide 3,000 tickets for league game and 4,500 tickets for cup games.
The East stand doesn’t work with away fans in both tiers and if we just used the lower tier, it pushes them towards the family stand and positions home fans above the away fans.
The west stand is corporate and towards the north would create flashpoints on stadium entry and exit that local authorities would not permit.
It’s not perfect, but it’s the way the stadium was designed and built. It would also cost us revenue, as we’d be moving capped £30 away tickets into areas where we charge a lot more.
Richard: Arsenal went to the PL and got their game against Spurs cancelled, when they had non-covid injuries and players at the AFCON. Where do the Albion stand on these?
PB: You have to play a game if you have 14 fit players including a goalkeeper. If your absences are a combination of reasons that takes you below 14, then the game can be postponed.
I think it will change that there will need to be a minimum number of Covid absences - possibly 4. If you go below the 14 but don’t have 4 covid absences, you will need to use younger players.
We’ve only attempted to have the Wolves game postponed when we were on the cusp of the 14. We ended up playing players who would otherwise not have played. It was disappointing, as it was a game we fancied our chances at, but that was the rule.
Paul Camillin: Can I ask about five substitutes?
PB: I think there will be more pressure in the summer from the bigger clubs to allow this as we’re one of a few leagues now that do not permit five. Graham likes to be flexible with tactics and formations, and five subs would permit him to do that even more. We voted for five before, and we’ll see if it comes to a vote again.
Fans’ Forum 25/01/22
Paul Barber (PB): Delighted to keep ST prices as they have been for the past few seasons. Important at a time of uncertainty for people. Tweak a few bits and pieces too.
Fan Advisory Board - extend fan dialogue. Add to day to day conversations. Engage formally, record minutes and circulate them. The eight fans to be a sounding board for other fans. JG will chair the board, as her team interacts with fans 365 days a year. Fans will also attend a full board meeting once a year.
Create structured dialogue.
Tracey Crouch recommended other steps, but Albion already ahead of many of those things.
Keegan Hutton: Do you think Brighton will have an open training session where fans can see the players train.
PB: Simple answer - yes, as soon as possible, Covid regulations stop us right now. If we can’t do it soon, we’ll aim to do it pre-season.
Tony Noble: (First time STH 66-y-o, supported Albion since he was 11.) Thoroughly enjoyed this year. Part of the ground can’t be used for parking. We come from East Grinstead on the bus. Ladies loos in the ESU are constantly blocked.
PB: Ladies loos - will ask Dave Baker (Head of maintenance) to take a look.
Parking: we don’t own the main part of the car park. It’s owned by Mr Bennett who leased it to the club for matchday parking. Mr B has submitted planning to build student accommodation on the land and is not prepared to allow club to use it whilst planning going on. Club has had to move a lot of people who did park there previously. Inconvenient, but club has a good relationship with Mr B. If he gets planning, club won’t be able to use it, although hope to get a bit of it back. If he doesn’t get planning, club will be speaking to him. Fewer cars in the area help the buses come and go.
Tony Noble: Attendance figure is not a true figure of people in the ground, is it?
PB: We’ve done it throughout the Amex period. It’s a sold tickets number, and is how the Premier League report this. In the 70s and 80s, it relied someone pressing a turnstyle pedal and may not have been accurate.
John Hewitt: Recognising revenue raised by broadcasting on Sky and BT, fans need to know when games are being played as soon as possible. We are due to travel to Newcastle on an unknown day of four less than 5 weeks away.
PB: It’s a minimum of one month. Balancing act if tv companies would go any earlier than that. They may not want to select earlier as they want to tell the story of the league at the time, and it may change if the select too early. Also impacts the club in terms of travel and securing hotel rooms. March fixtures announced in the next 24-48 hours, 4-5 weeks ahead of the first fixture. It’s not perfect, but it’s a compromise we have to accept currently.
Raymond Wright: Slightly confused between the ST sharing scheme and upgrading tickets. Is upgrading separate from sharing?
Jenny Gower: Yes. Sharing can only be done with anyone of the same age category as you. Upgrading is for concession tickets, and will cost the match ticket price less the pro rata season ticket match price.
RW: It’s easier to take someone NOT in your age group than someone in your age group.
JG: It depends. It can be quite expensive to upgrade a ticket, eg for a concession ticket to an adult ticket for Chelsea.
RW: Worrying trend of violence and people running on the pitch. Seems to be happening over the last few weeks. Why is it happening?
PB: I don’t know exactly why. Maybe some covid frustration after being cooped up for a period of time, having had a few drinks and not being able to contain your frustration. The PL and the police are meeting to see if stricter sanctions may be required. It’s stupidity and not a risk worth taking for a fan. We need to keep people safe. We have a legal obligation to protect people in their place of work, and that is what the pitch and surrounding area are.
It is a tiny, tiny minority. Most people go to meet friends, watch football and have a great time.
Alex Cowling: I particularly like how easy it is to have access to you. Will that continue with the FAB.
PB: I’m going to shut it down - I’ve had enough (joking). It’s something I’ve always done. It’s not something every club CEO does, and I respect that, but it’s what I do. You may not like the answer I give you, but I will give you an honest answer. We’re doing things in the best long-term interest of the club.
AC: Website said we’d get briefings from the FAB four times a season.
JG: We need to fine tune the details as to how we will communicate. We need to allow people to put themselves forward and begin schedule meetings, with the first one around the end of this season or beginning of the next and then write-up what is discussed.
AC: How to apply?
JG: That will be published in the coming weeks.
PB: This will be a great opportunity for people to get exposure to the people who run the club. Some people seem to think I do everything, but it’s not like that. We have a team of senior managers who are specialists in their area. The FAB will be able to quiz those people and find out why things happen. We’ll then make those minutes available for others to read. Across our senior management team, there’s over 100 years of experience running football clubs. We don’t sit there and think “how can we make fans unhappy with the things we do”. The FAB will lift the lid on how we make some of the decisions we do.
Alicia: I’ve been really worried about the gaffer since he came down with Covid.
PB: I want him back as soon as possible. I think Bjorn does too after the pressure he was under on Sunday. He’s doing OK. Although he’s missed a game, it wasn’t a bad time to become infected with the break coming up. He’s been in touch with Bjorn, Bruno and Crofty.
Alicia: What about Lewis?
PB: He was on the bench and doing well, but he’s got some lads playing well in front of him right now.
Alicia: Match attendance - do we have to show proof of a negative lateral flow to attend?
PB: We have a PL meeting tomorrow where we’ll vote on the requirement for the next round of matches. My gut feel is there will be no requirement for covid passports, but that comes down to the vote tomorrow.
Ian Cuthbert: As someone who has followed games from Edinburgh since 1975, I’m stunned at how things have progressed. Delighted to be able to get tickets home and away as an MyAlbion+ member. Worried about Newcastle scheduling, as I have to put things in place. As there are a few Scottish Albion fans, will we ever have a pre-season game in Scotland.
PB: Great to hear a Scottish accent, and we’ve got groups of fans in lots of countries now. We have a relationbship with HIbs, and we played Aberdeen a few years ago. A game against Hibs is a possibility. We do have a loose attangement to either play at Hibs or host them at the Amex.
IC: Congratulate David Weir on his job.
PB: DW is doing a great job and deserves his promotion. He’s a great character to have around the club and fits our club culture very well. He’s done a great job as a loan manager and is very well respected in the club.
Annette Kendrick: From my son and grandson: they can’t get travel to evening matches, can they have a rebate?
JG: They could buy to the edge of the travel zone, and then use match ticket to cover the rest of the journey.
AK: How do you do sharing with a junior in your F&F that doesn’t have their own account.
JG: You can setup a junior digital account for them, or use an email address that you have access to, as the email address does need to be unique. When you’ve done that you can login and share the ticket.
Paul Macdonald: Can we have an explanation on the Spurs allocation. The website said we would have up to 9,000 tickets and some fans were holding on for the top blocks so they could sit with their mates. I think we would have sold out 9,000, or closer to 9,000 than 5,700.
PB: At the Amex we’ve never sold out close to 9,000 away tickets. The closest we’ve come is just under 7,000 at Milton Keynes at 3pm on a Saturday in Spring when we were chasing promotion and tickets were a tenner. Most in FA Cup are around 6,000 to Man Utd and Liverpool.
We were getting a lot of emails from fans about the kickoff time, the problem with trains and it’s on terrestiral TV. If we took all 9,000 and didn’t sell them, we’d be faced with a bill of tens of thousands of pounds.
The question on communications is fair, but consider the other way round. We announce 5,700 tickets, they sell out quickly and we get more tickets and people then complain that we didn’t tell them we were getting more tickets as they would have waited to buy if they’d known.
PM: Were you surprised how quickly they sold?
PB: They didn’t - they sold quite slowly. If they’d sold quickly, they wouldn’t have gone to a member’s sale.
The average away allocation we’ve had in the Premier League is about 2,300. In the Championship it was about 1,700. We take good numbers, but we don’t have any data that suggests we would take 9,000 fans to this game.
PM: I feel for those with low loyalty points - how will they get to games?
PB: Only four away games this season sold out to STHs. There have been plenty of opportunities for fans to buy away tickets this season.
We had 35 complaints. If we multiply that by 30, that would be 1,000 extra tickets we may have sold. That means we’d have lost £50,000. We’re losing tens of millions of pounds a year, we can’t afford to just write off £50,000.
Paul Camillin: There was a desire in the club to take 9,000. We didn’t just take the easy option and take the smaller number. The sales we had didn’t give us the confidence we could have taken any more.
PB: And we had to factor in extra time and penalties and what that would mean for travel home.
JG: We tried to work with Spurs and do a sale or return, but Spurs didn’t want to do that - which is within the competition rules. The pace of sales was not quick enough, with our modelling, to believe we could have sold 9,000 tickets.
Spurs have 3 home games in a week, and they have a cup buy scheme for season ticket holders. They wanted to offer those extra tickets to their season ticket holders.
I don’t think we’d have sold 9,000. I think we’d have been in a nomans land in the middle (of 5,700 and 9,000).
PB: Tottenham and the FA were willing to move the kick-off time, but ITV were not willing. I thought if we could get it moved to just 7pm it would have helped people, but ITV weren’t willing to do that. When we enter a competition we have to accept the rules and TV schedules, but we do put ourselves in the place of our fans and we try to do our best for them.
PC: Worth touching on West Brom - it might have been moved after tickets were already sold?
PB: It’s easy for people to think we don’t try our best for the fans, but we always try our hardest to maximise live fan attendance. And the TV companies want that too. Sometimes we have to reach compromises that aren’t ideal for everybody.
Andrew Garfield: I asked before about lactose free milk. I’ve asked and it’s still not being provided (in the North). My other half has to bring her own.
PB: Leave that with us. There have been some shortages of some products - it may be that, but we’ll get it checked out for you.
AG: We went to Leicester and the atmosphere was great.
PB: Away support this season has been fantastic. Our record on the road has been good, which helps, and it’s great to get a late goal to turn a defeat into a draw or win.
AG: How many tickets for Watford?
JG: Less than 3,000 because of the capacity. I think it was around 2,300, and it’s always popular and sold out to season ticket holders.
AG: A lot of people in the North aren’t wearing masks.
PB: All we can do is recommend people wear them. Whatever happens at the PL meeting tomorrow I suspect we’ll still be recommending it when people are close together. Some people claim exemptions
Alan York: Post-covid I’ve lost 24 kilos. Did you slide extra seats into some rows - it feels quite cosy where we are.
PB: In some places, yes. When the stadium was built, we allowed more shoulder room than many stadiums, but the seats were on rails to allow them to be moved. The board sat in a row that had been arranged in the new setup and none of us could really tell the difference. In the winter when people are wearing thick coats, maybe it feels a bit more snug.
AY: It seems to be taking longer to get out of the coach park now. Sometimes up to 45 minutes.
PB: Some people are using car parks down by Virgin Active which comes by. We don’t have control of the public highways unfortunately and we rely on people letting our buses out.
AY: We didn’t go to Leicester, was it moved to a Sunday for a reason.
PB: Yes, because Leicester Tigers were playing at home on Saturday and Leicester asked if we could move it.
AY: Why do we let away fans drink so much after games - we’re always hustled away quickly.
PB: We’re just being nice, letting people have a drink if they like, and it helps us by slowing down the flow of people from the ground.
AY: We’ve been doing very well, and it’s come as a bit of a surprise.
PB: We try to keep on improving. Sometimes that may not always be obvious, but we’ve been confident behind the scenes that we’ve been getting better season after season.
Drew: I’m one of those fans who hasn’t built up loyalty points. I was brought up in Brighton but my parents hated football. I was a bit disappointed about the Spurs game. Question: Lots of reports of homophobic abuse recently, particularly at Leicester. It’s getting worse across many fanbases. Is it something you are raising with other clubs:
PB: It’s depressing. I heard it at Leicester. Jenny has meetings with her peer group as does Ady Morris. Other clubs are supportive. Catching people in the act and having police willing to act does not always happen. Sometimes though an operational decision has been taken to identify them, gather evidence and look to make an arrest later on when it’s less confrontational.
People said the same with pitch invaders, saying we didn’t chase them. We do get them every time, even if they make it back to the crowd.
On homophobic behaviour we will keep trying and keep educating, but some people do not get it unfortunately,
Mike Costello: Can you update us on Dan Ashworth?
PB: I hope Dan stays for as long as possible. There will always be options for our best staff and players. We can’t control that. Our policy when approached by other clubs is to allow them to have that conversation. Often, they go and see what is on offer and come back to the Albion and stay.
MC: Is it time to have a re-think of the Crystal Palace visiting debacle. 82 people on my bus thought it was a complete shambles. If it was left how it normally is
PB: Palace is a tricky one. We have to try and keep people safe, and we have to consider what will happen if people are allowed to do what they want. We also have a special train for the Palace fans, and getting them to that train without confrontation. Ady Morris and the police sit down and work out a plan to do that. It’s difficult to do that without some inconvenience.
Jen and I have sat down and watched every minute of every CCV footage and we know why some of the bottlenecks and congestion happened.
Many grounds have numerous exits into many streets. We don’t have all those disbursement points. We only really have three ways out which gives us a challenge.
Every time we put the plan in place, we look to see how we can improve it for the next time. We will sit down with the police and look to see how we can improve it next time. We only get to do this once a year, so we don’t get the chance to try it out first.
MC: Can you keep Palace fans in, for an hour?
PB: You can only detail people in a football stadium for what is a reasonable period of time. And we have a train schedule to fit in with, that has to fit into the national rail timetable. When the train arrives, we have to get 2,000 Palace fans onto it as quickly as possible. Ideally, I’d like to use buses for them all, but that’s not practical.
Harry Tripp: Armed forces, blue light cards, NHS: Villa did a subsidised ticket for those in the armed forces. Would the Albion consider doing this?
JG: We’ve worked with blue-light card, and as part of the pandemic response we committed to giving away 1,000 tickets. We also work with “tickets for troops” and we’ve given them an allocation to them for the last eight years or so. We use the central organisations as they have systems to validate who people are.
HT: When are you going to start showing Sky Sports in concourses again?
PB: Very soon I hope. Tomorrow’s PL meeting may allow that.
Name?: We drive down from near Heathrow, park in Mill Road 2.5 hours before kick-off. When Pyecombe is open that’s even better. I meet up with friends at the game. We often go abroad to Germany etc In these other countries, they make a lot better use of outdoor space eith bars, tents and toilets etc.
PB: Yes - Covid and losses got in the way a bit. But we do have plans to make a covered area behind the North Stand to allow people to have a beer and a burger with friends, maybe somewhere for kids to run around a bit as we know it’s not easy for families when you arrive early with kids. It will have toilets too. We want to do it properly, so we just need to find the money.
Andrew Garfield: We’re in the North Stand beside the goal. Every time it rains it gets flooded down there. The rain just sits there and we get wet feet.
PB: We’ll raise this with Dave Baker to look at.
AG: Any plans to extend the roof on the North.
PB: No - it would have needed to be done when the stadium was built.
Mark Davey: Tweaking of the ticket sharing system. Last year initial feedback was positive, but then it became negative. Feedback on the new changes seem to be negative on social media:
PB: Thousands of people have signed up and use it. It was a difficult thing to introduce. Season ticket discounts are personal to the holder, digital ticketing made sharing difficult.
The scheme was designed to give people flexibility for around £1 a match. We want to know who the tickets are going to. We have 5,000 matchday tickets to sell so it makes sense for us that
Scheme was intended to be as flexible as possible. We wanted to give people the choice to join or not as we didn’t think it was fair to charge everyone for sharing if they were going to attend every game.
The changes we think address the complaints we received.
We’ll always look to take feedback and improve where we can, but there are always limits to that.
JG: We would like the system to be friendlier, but it is an out of the box system, but we try to make it as friendly as we can. Some clubs offer a more open sharing scheme but some clubs don’t offer a discount on
PB: The scheme isn’t about profiteering, it actually costs the club money. The people who receive sharing tickets are those who may otherwise buy a single matchday ticket. Ticket sales have gone down at a time when we have more tickets to sell. People ask about why the ticket exchange opens later now. It’s opening later because matchday sales have gone down. The cost of the scheme, to the club, could be £2m in terms of tickets we’re now not selling.
We have no evidence that people who come to a one off game with a mate become season ticket holders. Most new season ticket holders are club members. We’re still growing our fanbase. We’re in a different stage of club development to the likes of Spurs.
Kevin Claxton: On behalf of the ladies in my family, who are STHs - they find the wine undrinkable, particularly the white wine. Can’t they spend £1 more for a better bottle of wine.
PB: The catering manager, Andy Perkins, has had a torrid time. Those mini bottles of wine have been in short supply. We’ll see if he can source something better.
Peter: It’s amazing to watch what we’re watching today. We’ve never had such a fantastic setup players, manager and owner. Interested in safe standing. We were in safe standing at Chelsea. Tottenham and West Ham have it as well. The atmosphere is better than sitting. We’re not hearing anything from the club on safe standing.
PB: We’ve not been negative on safe standing. We’ve consulted in questionnaires and an open meeting on it. We can’t expand capacity with it and people can’t stand where they want. If there’s an appetite for it we’ll consider it. Most of the North Stand stands already - will we get a major atmosphere lift from it?
We’ve only had one incident with people standing at the Amex in 10 years, and it was an away fan in the South Stand who stood on a seat. Rails will make it safer.
There are some people who have bought into the North Stand who don’t want to stand, so it would have to be lateral, ie across the back rows.
It also requires Tony’s investment, which will not bring in any extra revenue and may not improve the atmosphere at all.
Peter: We’ve given the away team the south stand. It gives the away team an advantage.
PB: The problem we have, as beautifully designed as it is was designed to put away fans in the south stand and provides access to the coach park. We have to be able to provide 3,000 tickets for league game and 4,500 tickets for cup games.
The East stand doesn’t work with away fans in both tiers and if we just used the lower tier, it pushes them towards the family stand and positions home fans above the away fans.
The west stand is corporate and towards the north would create flashpoints on stadium entry and exit that local authorities would not permit.
It’s not perfect, but it’s the way the stadium was designed and built. It would also cost us revenue, as we’d be moving capped £30 away tickets into areas where we charge a lot more.
Richard: Arsenal went to the PL and got their game against Spurs cancelled, when they had non-covid injuries and players at the AFCON. Where do the Albion stand on these?
PB: You have to play a game if you have 14 fit players including a goalkeeper. If your absences are a combination of reasons that takes you below 14, then the game can be postponed.
I think it will change that there will need to be a minimum number of Covid absences - possibly 4. If you go below the 14 but don’t have 4 covid absences, you will need to use younger players.
We’ve only attempted to have the Wolves game postponed when we were on the cusp of the 14. We ended up playing players who would otherwise not have played. It was disappointing, as it was a game we fancied our chances at, but that was the rule.
Paul Camillin: Can I ask about five substitutes?
PB: I think there will be more pressure in the summer from the bigger clubs to allow this as we’re one of a few leagues now that do not permit five. Graham likes to be flexible with tactics and formations, and five subs would permit him to do that even more. We voted for five before, and we’ll see if it comes to a vote again.
