FAO Prestwich Blue (or any other forum members if you're on here)
Prob unfair that this gets directed to you, you're the only forum member around and fair play to you for responding and engaging.
Would you be prepared to bring up at the next meeting some of the points made in this thread re the away tickets issue?
Obviously we can't quantify the levels of support for opinions held across the fan base from this thread so I accept there's a bit of guesswork here!
But....
I think that a fair sized percentage of away fans would like the following to be raised with the club
1. More away ticket availability for younger/newer fans is prob a good idea (though I see on here not all agree). Why can't this dedicated allocation be spread across all 3 current groups that get access to tickets (SC, corporate, points holders).
2. Would the club be prepared to detail how many tickets corporate holders get access to for games, how many per corporate etc? They released info re points holders not using those Shaktar tickets they'd bought so they are obviously willing to divulge info for some supporter groupings.
3. Is there any appetite for looking at Supporter Club allocations and if they should have to include some proof of points qualification to get tickets? Or even for the club to just release some info on how this all works to provide some transparency? After years of reading threads on here re SC and tickets I'm still not sure how it works from branch to branch!
In general I feel that everyone knows everything about the points holder process (and it's failings) but the other 2 groups that get tickets are still somewhat in the shadows and are not being looked at.
If there are to be changes (fair enough) can we have transparency re all 3 groups allocations and a sharing of the changes to allocations over all 3 groups.
Ta.
1) That was the offer on the table and we took it. From my point of view the younger fans are still ST holders so the group I represent aren’t losing out overall but I’d prefer those 150 to have come straight ‘off the top’ so that ST holders only “lose” 60% of that 150, meaning there’s effectively a net gain to ST holders of 60 tickets. On the other hand, stopping giving points for away games (apart from those that don’t sell out to ST holders) and ID checks should mean more tickets are actually going to people who want them.
2) Officially it’s 1 per customer but I doubt they strictly enforce that. You could easily imagine a couple in the Tunnel Club asking for 4, maybe because they’re staying with friends on the South Coast and want to take those friends to our game at Bournemouth, and getting them. Money talks sadly but the number of tickets going to hospitality ST holders is far out of proportion to their numbers. 250 out of a 3k allocation seems more than enough.
3) I believe, just by the fact that they’ve finally released the data on allocations (which they've refused to do previously) that there’s an appetite for looking at everything. The club clearly believe there’s a problem as this is an issue they’ve put on the table, not us.
The SC issue has been done to death on here but branches get an allocation and each has a different method for distributing those. Mine uses a ballot, some do it on a points system based on attendance at meetings, others say if you had one for the last match you can’t have one for the next but they need to submit a supporter number for each ticket they get.
Someone else mentioned the club should buy tickets off the secondary sites to trace them. I’d be surprised if they haven’t been doing that and that’s part of the reason they’ve put the issue on the table. I also suspect there have been issues at away games where the person involved isn’t the person who originally bought the ticket. As I said earlier, my personal opinion is that the points system and SC allocation were designed in an earlier era for different reasons. The seasonal hospitality issue is a new one which affects things.
In my working life I’ve seen this loads of times where organisations have old processes that met a need years ago but where the need has changed and/or the process is simply outdated or been changed piecemeal. If I was an external consultant advising the club I’d start by telling them to work out what their issues were with the current system and what overall objectives did they have as regards ticketing. Then start from there. It may well be that the points system, with a few tweaks, is fit for purpose. My impression of the club so far is that they tend to not act if they can’t find a perfect solution to a problem but, when they do act, they often don’t execute well. Hopefully we’ll help them with both these things.
