Time for Brighton to rethink their current ticket sharing policy?

According to Brighton & Hove Albion, there were 30,548 people in attendance at the Amex for the 2-0 defeat against Everton in the last home game before the international break – a crowd that was just 114 away from eclipsing the stadium’s football record.

It was a similar story the week before against Watford. The Albion claimed 29,485 were present, a figure which seemed incompatible with the number of empty blue seats dotted around all sections of the ground.

You probably do not need telling why there is such a discrepancy between announced attendances and actual bodies in the stadium. Brighton have for many years now been using tickets sold as their attendance figure rather than people passing through the turnstiles.

Wigan Athletic at home on November 4th 2014 was the most famous example of this. The Latics brought barely one hundred supporters with them and the Brighton footballing public had little appetite for spending a cold Tuesday night watching another instalment of the Sami Hyypia Reign of Terror.

The record books will forever show that 23,044 people saw Christian Walton’s Championship debut and Gary Gardner (remember him?) scoring the only goal of the game when the real figure was just over half of that.

Brighton of course are not the only club to use ticket sales to make up a pre-ttendance as opposed to an actual attendance. Arsenal have long been mocked for it, announcing crowds in excess of 60,000 when there have visibly been anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 empty seats at the Emirates.

Clubs who choose to go down the ‘tickets sold’ route would gain more credibility if they asked Boris Johnson to announce their attendance figure on the side of a red bus.

As fun as it is to mock this desperation to appear full to capacity, there is a bigger question here. If the Albion have sold approaching 30,000 tickets for both home games so far, then why are so may of those tickets going unused and seats left empty?

The answer it would seem is because of the club’s new ticket swap scheme, introduced this summer as a means of exerting greater control over who is entering the stadium.

This is understandable during a pandemic. Less understandable during a pandemic is that the club have also seen the pound signs flashing before their eyes and tried to turn it into a minor money making scheme, something which a majority of supporters have refused to support. Hence the amount of vacant blue seats dotted around the Amex.

Previously, a season ticket holder who could not attend a game could simply hand over their season ticket card to a friend or relative to go in their place.

The empty seat was filled, the Albion had an extra body through the door to spend cash on beer and £3.20 bags of Starburst and there was another voice to potentially add to the atmosphere.

Individual matchday tickets being downloaded onto individual mobile phones means that passing on a ticket is no longer possible. The only way a Brighton fan can give their ticket to somebody else is by paying a one-off fee of £20 to upgrade their season ticket account to gain the privilege.

There is more. You cannot forward your ticket to any old Tom, Dick or Harry. The recipient has to be a MyAlbion+ member. Having a fan number or a purchase history whereby the club already have your details is not enough. The cost of joining MyAlbion+ is £25 per season.

This is the process that we had to go through at WAB Towers before the Watford game. £20 to upgrade one season ticket so it could be transferred, another £25 to make your erstwhile correspondent’s partner a MyAlbion+ member so she could receive a ticket.

On the face of it, £45 so that she can now attend any home game in 2021-22 when the season ticket is available is not a bad deal, especially as she quite likes coming to football.

That last sentence is crucial. She likes coming to the football. Other recipients of a previously free season ticket seat might have been wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbours and acquaintances who are less bothered by Brighton & Hove Albion.

How many of those types are going to pay £25 to become a member at a football club they do not necessarily support to watch a team they do not really care about?

Your brother-in-law did not mind coming to Brighton v Norwich and buying three pints when the ticket was free. Tell him he needs to pay £25 and suddenly checking out flat pack furniture at Ikea (A) is more appealing than seeing if Graham Potter will play a flat back four against Southampton (H).

How many current Brighton supporters became Albion fans in this way, given a ticket by a friend or relative because somebody could not attend?

They then become hooked, buying tickets of their own before becoming fully fledged season ticket holders. I know of several Chelsea and Manchester United supporters who have switched allegiances based on going to the Amex, initially using somebody else’s season ticket who could not attend. The club have now shut off that particular route to growing the fan base.

It is this need to be a MyAlbion+ Member which seems to be the biggest sticking point based on comments about the process by disgruntled fans.

More than a few supporters have mentioned paying the money to have the honour of being able to pass on their season ticket, only to then not know any MyAlbion+ members to send it to.

Other fans have scrimped and saved to afford even their own season ticket, especially at a time when jobs have been lost and people are having to count every penny because of the havoc wreaked by the pandemic.

Another £20 on top of the hundreds already being forked out is a cost that they are not able to willingly pay, and so their seat remains empty whenever they cannot attend.

Do not just take our word for it. Twitter has been awash with fans complaining about the impact of the new system since it was introduced.

A father could not attend the Watford game but did not want their child to miss out. He forked out £20 to upgrade his season ticket and £25 to sign the kid’s mother up as a MyAlbion+ member so she could take his place.

This in effect turned his £28 season ticket seat into a £73 ticket. Yes, he will not need to pay the £45 again. But £73 to watch Brighton v Watford? When the club are already receiving hundreds and hundreds of pounds from that man for two season tickets? Come on.

Another Albion fan wanted to take his son who is not a season ticket holder to the Everton game. Because a straightforward ticket swap is no longer an option, he purchased two more tickets so that they could sit together and paid the £20 to be able to offer his normal seat to friends.

Nobody was interested because they did not want to become MyAlbion+ members. It was the first time in 10 years at the Amex that he had not been able to find a taker and so it remained empty.

Said fan therefore effectively paid for three tickets, just so his son could see the game. He said on Twitter that he probably will not renew his season ticket next season, instead picking and choosing which games to attend in order to sit with his son.

Most businesses know that it is a risky idea to start charging for something you used to let happen for free. There are a significant number of fans who will simply refuse to pay to pass on their ticket as they have been doing so at no cost for the past decade.

When introducing this new ticket transfer system, the club clearly felt there would be enough people willing to pay for it. The empty seats and the complaints suggest otherwise.

Brighton now have to ask themselves if getting £20 from a season ticket holder and a few more MyAlbion+ members is worth less footfall at the Amex and excluding visitors who might end up spending significant amounts on beer and food.

Surely an extra 3,000 people in the stadium buying a pie and two pints on average is better than a few quid made by rinsing a membership scheme and ticket forwarding system which could quite easily be introduced for free?

With track and trace, Covid passports, names on tickets and ID checks at the turnstiles, there cannot be too much disagreement that the club needs data about who is coming into the Amex. That justifies a membership database, containing contact details and other relevant information in case of an emergency.

There is no reason why it should cost supporters to join though. The club already have details on any supporter who has bought a ticket in the past and been issued with a FAN number. Why the need to be a MyAlbion+ member?

Liverpool offer a similar ticket swap scheme which is free to season ticket holders to use. If a club filled with so much greed and gluttony that they tried to join the European Super League is willing to let supporters pass on their tickets for free, then why not a community club like Brighton & Hove Albion?

It seems unlikely that the Albion will follow suit this season; it would be an admission of a mistake for one thing, which is something we know the club seldom ever do. There would also be quite a few cheesed off season ticket holders who have already given their pound of flesh to the club.

Instead, we will probably be told how the scheme is a great success and how so many season ticket holders have signed up to it – in the same way that Paul Barber claimed that charging fans to enter the Seven Stars Bar for the 2015-16 season had proven popular beyond belief. So popular in fact that the facility was closed at the end of the season.

There are other issues with the season ticket swap system too beyond leaving fans feeling they are getting fleeced. Numerous supporters have reported that ticket forwarding is too confusing or does not always work – and this is after they have paid their £20 to set it up.

The phone lines at the ticket office are jammed constantly with patient staff trying to sort through a myriad of problems caused by mobile ticketing and answer queries, and that can make getting through all but impossible. Supporters then simply give up, leaving more empty seats littered across the Amex.

Brighton treating us to a pie-in-the-sky pre-ttendance for every home Premier League game is downright comical. Less funny is the number of empty seats.

The club are missing out on filling the Amex, attracting new supporters and generating cash because of the desire to make what they mistakenly believed would be a quick and easy quid. Time for a rethink.