Communication could have saved Brighton from the Spurs ticket situation

Oh dear, not more clickbait from WeAreBrighton.com? Not exactly… we are just here to comment on another ticketing situation that has left a number of Brighton fans feeling pretty cheesed off, this time surrounding the sale of tickets for the FA Cup Fourth round tie away at Spurs.

The gist of this one is that most Albion supporters were under the impression that an allocation of 9,000 away tickets would be available for the game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday 5th February.

As a result, thousands of season ticket holders waited to purchase tickets until the sale moved through the loyalty levels.

They wanted to go with friends and family who were MyAlbion+ members or had a purchase history, whose sales windows did not start until Monday and beyond. In believing that 9,000 seats were available, there was no rush to buy.

Then on Monday, the club announced that the allocation of 5,700 had sold out. There would be no more tickets. All those who had held off buying had therefore missed out thanks to a spectacular lack of communication from the Albion over what the final allocation would be.

Lots of those without tickets have taken aim at the club for not accepting the full 9,000. That is not entirely fair on the club though, for the reasons that Paul Barber rightly pointed out in an email to one disgruntled fan publicly shared on Twitter.

Ah update by Paul Barber himself #BHAFC pic.twitter.com/6HoPlJbqD4

— Connor 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@connorbhafc) January 17, 2022

Brighton were expected to pay up front for the number of tickets they wanted. With the choice of numbers between 5,700 and 9,000, the Albion had to decide if they wanted to pay around £142,500 (based on each ticket costing £25) for the smaller allocation or £225,000 for the larger.

If they took all 9,000 and then only sold 3,000, they would have already paid for the 6,000 unsold seats. It could have turned into a loss-making exercise for Brighton.

It is easy to see why the Albion did not think they would sell 9,000 tickets. The game kicks off at 8pm making train travel back to Sussex virtually impossible if it went to extra time and penalties.

There are rail replacement buses between Three Bridges and Brighton. The game is on ITV4 (as it was rightly not deemed important enough to bump The Masked Singer off the main channel) so people can watch on television.

When the kick off time and the rail situation became clear, a number of Brighton fans bemoaned the broadcasters and said they would now not go.

Combine that with the low attendances at the Amex for the Wolves and Brentford games which were similarly impacted by television and travel (especially so in the club’s eyes given that they do not to see a problem with the season ticket sharing scheme) and you can understand why the club went for 5,700.

Selling 9,0000 would have seemed like a push and an unnecessary financial outlay, from which there was a strong chance of no return – even if the difference in expenditure between 5,700 and 9,000 seats was only around 10 days pay for the sadly departed DJ Jurgen Locadia.

Brighton not thinking they could sell 9,000 tickets for Spurs is not the problem here. The problem is the woeful lack of communication through the club over what the final allocation had been decided as.

In his typically defensive email justifying how the Albion got it right, Mr Barber said that the club never confirmed 9,000 tickets.

That comes across as saying supporters are to blame for not purchasing their seats ASAP as nobody should have assumed that the maximum allocation had been taken.

And that is technically true. The initial statement from the club regarding Spurs v Brighton tickets said that an allocation of 9,000 may be taken.

It is always a risk not buying straight away, even if you want to go with friends and family – the early bird catches the worm and all that. But why as soon as the club knew it would be 5,700 tickets and no more did they not announce that?

If season ticket holders were aware of the smaller number of seats, everyone who wanted to go could have bought a ticket before they sold out on Monday.

You then do not end up with the situation where thousands of fans who qualified for a seat miss out whilst waiting to buy with friends and family further down the pecking order.

One simple email, website article, Facebook and Twitter post and all the anger being directed at the club could have been avoided. Fans would have known where they stood when it came to getting a Spurs ticket.

The lack of communication seemingly did not just start and end with club-to-fan information, either. A couple of supporters emailed the WAB inbox to say they were apparently told by ticket office staff after contacting the club on Monday that more seats would be put on sale, even as the availability ticked down to several hundred.

Another fan he had been told by another member of staff (it is unclear whether they worked in the ticket office) that even after the 5,700 were gone, they need not worry as more would be made available.

So, whilst the club only taking the 5,7000 seats was understandable, so was the anger at the fact nobody at the Albion thought to mention what the confirmed allocation was.

Once it then became clear that all the seats were gone and Brighton would be getting no more, fans might have been placated by an apology from the club. A simple “Sorry, we should have said that we only had 5,700 tickets.”

Instead, we got one of the more wonderful justifications of Brighton getting it right we have ever seen, even by Mr Barber’s high standards.

In that aforementioned email to supporters, he claimed that taking only 5,700 seats have been the correct decision as demand had tailed off in the 12 hours before tickets were sold out, proving no more than that number wanted to go.

Those 12 hours were of course 9pm Sunday night to 9am Monday morning. Does anybody know a single soul who thinks 2am on a Monday is the time to get their Spurs v Brighton tickets?

It was an incredible piece of reasoning, completely ignoring the fact that demand had tailed off is because thousands of Albion fans were waiting to buy with friends and family once they qualified for a ticket in the days ahead.

Judging by all the complaints from those who said they missed out, demand would have increased as the sale made it further through the MyAlbion+ and purchase history loyalty levels.

It should still be an amazing away day for the 5,700 fans who secured their seats. An 8pm kick off, the Magic of the FA Cup, the best stadium in the country and a genuine chance that the Albion could eliminate one of the European Super League Elite Six and take a step closer to Wembley.

Enjoy it if you are going. Enjoy it if you are watching on ITV. And enjoy watching Michel Owen singing as Doughnuts if you choose instead to tune into The Masked Singer.

Fingers crossed, the club will offer better communication for our allocation when we head to Old Trafford to beat Manchester United in round five.