Brighton announce super duper new season ticket benefits for 2022-23

Brighton have announced that season ticket prices will be frozen for the 2022-23 season, a fantastic gesture from the club at a time when they could quite easily have justified an increase in the cost.

The Albion are flying high and on course for their best ever finish in English football. Graham Potter has built a side capable of going toe-to-toe with the best clubs in the Premier League and yet the renewal price remains the same as it was this time last year when Brighton ended the campaign in 16th spot.

Footballing matters are not the only reason as to why the Albion might have felt comfortable putting the cost up.

Covid-19 has badly hit the club’s finances and nobody could blame Brighton for trying to claw back some money through 2022-23 season ticket renewals – especially if it helped with the purchase of that striker everyone knows to be the missing piece in the Seagulls jigsaw.

Unfortunately though, the fact that prices are not going up has been completely overshadowed by the controversial season ticket sharing scheme remaining in place, albeit slightly modified.

The Albion Spin Machine has highlighted that one incredible, super duper new benefit is that season ticket holders get the honour of sharing their seat for free for one game a season. What a privilege.

For the other 18 matches, supporters will still have to pay to pass on their seat. Upgrading your season ticket to enable that for every game across the Premier League campaign is a £20 payment, just as it was for this season.

In addition, season ticket seats can now also be shared on a game-by-game basis. For a Category A game, passing on a ticket will cost £12. Category B is £8 and Category C is £5.

Any recipient of a ticket must still be a MyAlbion+ Member, meaning that only those willing to join the membership scheme (at a cost of £25 for the current season) can be the recipient of a season ticket seat.

If you do not have any friends or family members willing to pay the money to join MyAlbion+, then you will struggle to move your season ticket on when you cannot attend.

The ability to only pass a ticket to family or friends who are MyAlbion+ members has caused thousands of empty seats at the Amex in 2021-22, especially when inconvenient kick off times have been hoisted on Brighton by television companies.

Paul Barber famously responded to criticism of the season ticket sharing scheme as “clickbait” in a 1,700 word letter to the Brighton Independent in December, justifying the costs and the success of the scheme.

This despite the evidence of gaps in the stands that Albion fans were witnessing with their own eyes at each and every home game.

It will be interesting to see whether the inability to share a ticket impacts on renewals. Sky and BT’s butchering of the fixture list means that supporters are now missing games in unprecedented numbers, to the point that the club sent out a survey to certain fans whose seats have gone empty to find out their reasons.

When season tickets could be passed on for free to a friend, family member or co-worker, missing six or seven matches did not seem to matter so much as the seat was still being filled.

Now though any Albion fan who cannot make matches moved to ridiculous kick off times like 8pm on Boxing Day is missing out.

Suddenly, if you can only make 12 of the 19 home Premier League matches played at the Amex, then the cost benefit of having a season ticket no longer exists.

At a time when every fixture is going to general sale, Brighton fans maybe more inclined to buy individual match tickets for games they can actually attend once the time and date is confirmed by our broadcasting paymasters.

When announcing Brighton 2022-23 season ticket details, the club helpfully included a graphic showing how much each category of season ticket saved compared to buying an individual seat at every match.

For an adult, that amount is anywhere between £125 and £172. If your seat sits empty for six games however because of Sky and BT, then suddenly you are not saving much (if anything) on purchasing a season ticket.

There are other benefits for 2022-23 alongside the price freeze. The club have extended the amnesty introduced last season allowing a new named owner to be assigned to a season ticket. The cost for this is £20 for Joe Bloggs and free for MyAlbion+ members.

Interest free direct debits remain in place – another fantastic option that not many clubs offer – and supporters are again able to move seats within the West, East and South Stands.

The North Stand currently is full to capacity and so supporters cannot take up seats in the area. That could yet change if renewal numbers are disappointing.

Clearly, there is much which the club deserve praise for in their offering for season ticket holders in 2022-23.

It is a shame then that all that good has gone under the radar because the deeply unpopular cost of sharing a season ticket seat to only a MyAlbion+ member remains in place.

The football that Brighton have played this season deserves to be watched by an Amex full to capacity every week.

If the experience of this season is anything to go by, then that will not be the case all the while the club restricts who season ticket holders can pass their seat onto in the event that they cannot make a game.