Seat Counters - 2024/25

We have grown used to it but London-Manchester and general rail transport is expensive and useless. It's having a significant effect on attendances, and that probably effects all clubs not just City. The club though should be aware of the world that fans live in.
 
M18CTID said:
No doubt that there will be ST holders putting their tickets on the exchange but you're not factoring in blocks of tickets returned from 3rd party ticket agencies - tickets that were never on sale to fans in the first place last summer - who haven't been able to sell them. This has happened a few times now - Forest in December, Leicester the other week, and now Villa tonight. How do you explain a block of 200 or so seats all together and all at the back of one of the 3rd tier blocks suddenly appearing on the planner for the Villa game? That's clearly not a load of season ticket holders who are in the same part of the ground suddenly deciding to whack their seats back on the exchange all at the same time.
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A few questions spring to mind:

1) Are there no financial penalties for these 3rd party sellers if they return unsold tickets?

2) Is the 3rd party allocation always the same number, regardless of whether its a Cat A or Cat B game?

3) Is there a minimum time frame for return of unsold tickets?

4) Do the Club issue an agreed price matrix to 3rd party sellers?

5) Can a 3rd party seller simply request 100 tickets, market them at whatever price they think is appropriate, say £500.00 per ticket, maybe sell 50 at this price (trousering a tidy £25K) then simply return the balance of 50 tickets, without penalty? In which case, there is no incentive to price the tickets fairly in the first place. If they marketed at £200.00 per ticket, and sell out at that price, they earn £5K less that selling 50 at £500.00, so they will always go the expensive route, which will always result in unsold tickets and EMPTY seats.

6) Is there not scope for the Club to enter a contract with 3rd party sellers? If they don't sell, they are liable for to be charged the face value ticket price. That would then enable the Club to offer these tickets at discounted prices to us mere mortals and get bums in seats.

7) Are the 3rd party sellers audited & monitored by the Club? Price point/unsold returns/complaints etc. Surely there must be minimum performance parameters that must be achieved or lose their licence?

It seems to me that the Club place far more draconian restrictions on its regular Joe supporters than it does with these 3rd party leeches.....all fucking NINE of them. I can see a scenario, not too distant, where we have ZERO season tickets, and all match day tickets sold through 3rd party agencies - none direct with the Club. The whole thing sub-contracted out to the highest bidder. No ticket office, no supporter services, just a sea of chavs dishing out tickets to whoever the fuck wants one.

Nah, couldn't possibly happen....could it?
 
mcfc315 said:
Why are so many season ticket holders selling tickets for tonight?
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Who says they are?

Having a look in my block, nobody’s seat who I know who is a ST holder around me is available (and I’m one of those chatty fuckers who knows about 50 people around me). However, the seat to my immediate left which hasn’t been on the planner all season (which hasn’t been a ST seat for two years) is available tonight for £73 and still unsold.

Loads of tickets all became available at once for tonight, there’s no way loads of ST holders just happened to decide not to go in the same hour on the same day. It suggests that the club’s ticket tout partners have returned unsold tickets of their allocation and the club are having to sell them the proper way and put them all on at once.

The fanboys aren’t interested tonight because Haaland’s injured and the leeches aren’t interested tonight because we aren’t providing them with the reflected glory they’ve latched into us for this season because we’re not going for the title.
 
With the ticket exchange, the club could use it to fill the stadium instead of filling their pockets.

Should allow people to list it on the exchange for whatever price they want upto the matchday ticket price.
That would sell lot more tickets and also get rid of the the Facebook ticket pages that they seem keen to do.
Even if they took 10% of the cost, it would get used a lot more and we wouldn't have empty seats.
 
If anyone truly believes the club is only handing out 550 tickets to resale sites, I have a bridge to sell you.
 
You have to ask who is holding Soriano accountable for this situation? The board should, by rights, but I've said before that our board isn't adequately constituted in my view. There should be a mixture of executive members, connected non-executives and wholly independent non-executives.

As far as I can see, Simon Cliff is the only executive, and all the non-executives are connected to the ownership, and so remote from the club (they're also CFG board members) that they have little or no idea of the problems. There are no football people on the board and seemingly no one challenging the strategy (or lack of it to be more precise) around pricing and fan loyalty.
 
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Gray said:
I gave up working my holidays around the fixtures several years back. What they publish at the start of a season bears no comparison to what actually happens.
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Saddo that I am, I tend to book holidays either in the international breaks which are known well in advance. I also book around away games, once they’re out, as I’ve only had a ST for 40 years and can only ever get an away ticket for West Ham……
 
we'll get slated for empty seats tonight, but the prices are outrageous. A parent who wants to take a couple of kids is going to fork out around £200 for the evening - bad enough as a one off treat, but no way anyone is going 2 or 3 times a month and paying that.
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Marvin. said:
I think a lot of seasoncard holders can't make this game, regardless of whether they are onside or offside. The sky-high match-day prices make it difficult to resell in the time available.

We know from the Wembley ticket-sales that seasoncard holders are not going to Wembley in the numbers that they did. That's normal behaviour imo. You can also see how significantly City's match-day fanbase has grown in recent years. They have saved semi-final day. Looks like we will take 28k minimum to Wembley.
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Agree with all what you’ve said - but this is also the by product of failing to engage with supporters. Treating supporters with contempt for years ends up with thousands losing interest.

The tone deaf Viagogo and seasoncard usage requirement for next year press releases tell you that nobody at City in the boardroom or in the PR team has a clue about reading the room or keeping fans onboard. They just don’t get it.

The empty seats tonight and Sunday will hopefully have some shitting their pants in our boardroom about our shiny new stand being empty.
 
Setting off for a 6/7 hour round trip now, struggling to get motivated, couldn’t care less if we qualified for the champions league or not, Europa league would actually be more affordable.
 
Gray said:
I gave up working my holidays around the fixtures several years back. What they publish at the start of a season bears no comparison to what actually happens.
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My rota pattern is I work 5 saturdays and 5 sundays every 7 weeks , all my holiday go to watching City,but on certain
days like today I'm off,so its early drinking for me,even better, I'm off weds too .
 
Groke said:
we'll get slated for empty seats tonight, but the prices are outrageous. A parent who wants to take a couple of kids is going to fork out around £200 for the evening - bad enough as a one off treat, but no way anyone is going 2 or 3 times a month and paying that.
View attachment 153669
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tickets on the 'tickets' page on here going for £20/35 right now.
 
Beaker said:
If anyone truly believes the club is only handing out 550 tickets to resale sites, I have a bridge to sell you.
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It seems highly likely that the bulk of the seats online are from season ticket exchanges. That is a big enough problem in of itself without inventing some other cynical explanation.
 
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