WatnallRed
Geoff Thomas
I have been meaning to write a post about my thoughts on the overall ticket situation for a while. Most of these points have probably been raised in this thread earlier but here are my views on the different subjects.
1. Home Membership
Forest sold 2000 Gold memberships to previous home members and any season tickets holders who did not renew.
Forest sold 2500 Silver memberships and 5000 Bronze.
The original article on the official site did not confirm how many of each were to be sold. It mentioned Gold would be guaranteed a seat if purchased during their priority window and that bronze would likely be single seats. We deduced from the single seat line in the Bronze section that any Silver members should therefore by guaranteed a ticket but this could have been made clearer by the club.
Both Silver and Bronze sold out within a couple of hours of going on sale, Silver pretty much as fast as transactions could be processed.
The club chose to put Silver and Bronze on sale to “Supporters with previous booking history”. This is where my frustrations start. As someone who attended 8 league games last season (cup and play offs in addition to that) it was annoying to be in an online ticket scramble with others who may only have attended 1. The club had shown previously with the play off and Wembley sales that they could stagger sales over several days based on previous games attended.
2. Away Membership
The club chose to reward 400 fans who had attended 18 away games or more last season with a top tier of away membership.
The club allowed other remaining away members to renew into a second tier or membership, 2100 members.
The club further sold 2500 additional second tier memberships to season ticket holders.
It’s probably worth mentioning I am no fan of these paid membership schemes. In previous years my opinion is that some have effectively used it as queue jump for high demand fixtures (Derby, Play offs, high profile cup ties). This applies to both home and away memberships.
A large number of games during last season at least went on sale to season ticket holders and some even general sale (booking history). Its fair to say that a season ticket holder could have gone to several away games throughout the year without the need for a membership.
Again the further 2500 additional second tier memberships, like the Silver and Bronze home memberships, were sold with no staggered sale based on games attended. In theory a season ticket holder who went to 10 away games last season could have missed out on an away membership to someone who attended 0. And now on a game-by-game basis, in theory someone who attended 17 games last year may miss out on a ticket to someone who went to 0.
I note the point on the trusts Q and A about 42% of fans who attended away games last year having no away membership and such the need to expand the scheme. But then why not implement a staggered sale that rewarded those 42% and not simply opening up to, in theory, people who attended 0. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the new 2500 away members and the number of away games attended last season.
3. Match Ticket Sales Process
For this purpose I’m going to treat the sales process for both home and away matches as the same. Demand is greater than supply for both away tickets and at the point home games go on sale to bronze members (at least so far for WH and Spurs).
There have been inconsistencies here so far. Sometimes there is an online queue, sometimes there isn’t. The online queue is stated as going live 30 minutes before the sale time as per the guidance on the official site but yet that appears to be going live earlier.
As someone who attends gigs on a fairly regular basis I have a basic knowledge of how some of these systems work. When demand outstrips supply, speed is of the essence. Understanding the logic of how the baskets and sessions work, along with persistence can also help. For example lets assume there are 1000 tickets and each person can only buy 1. The first 1000 people each successfully add a ticket to their basket. If you are person 1001 and try to add a ticket to the basket it will state non available. If person 300 (300 chosen as a random example) decides they no longer want the ticket or their payment fails or they get distracted and their basket times out then the ticket will be released and made available again. Lets assume person 1001 sees no tickets available and gives up. If person 1002 is now on the system and is receiving “no tickets available” but continues to try and is the first person to hit add to basket once the ticket from person 300 is released then they will be allocated the ticket.
The above situation helps certain types of people. The tech savvy and also those that are available to spend an hour or so on the ticket site around the time they go on sale (10am on a weekday being Forest preferred time currently). My opinion is that this is using up peoples time unnecessarily even if they are successful. It probably also favours the younger, tech savvy generation. Staggered sales (based on an agreed criteria, though forest appear to want to move away from this) or ballots would take up a lot less time.
4. Questions/Points FAO Trust/Forza Etc
For anyone reading this who may have dialogue with the club I would be interested if you could answer or raise the below points.
1. Based on the fact the club have used the phrase “closed shop”.
3. Why were staggered sales based on previous attendance not used for the membership sale?
1. Home Membership
Forest sold 2000 Gold memberships to previous home members and any season tickets holders who did not renew.
Forest sold 2500 Silver memberships and 5000 Bronze.
The original article on the official site did not confirm how many of each were to be sold. It mentioned Gold would be guaranteed a seat if purchased during their priority window and that bronze would likely be single seats. We deduced from the single seat line in the Bronze section that any Silver members should therefore by guaranteed a ticket but this could have been made clearer by the club.
Both Silver and Bronze sold out within a couple of hours of going on sale, Silver pretty much as fast as transactions could be processed.
The club chose to put Silver and Bronze on sale to “Supporters with previous booking history”. This is where my frustrations start. As someone who attended 8 league games last season (cup and play offs in addition to that) it was annoying to be in an online ticket scramble with others who may only have attended 1. The club had shown previously with the play off and Wembley sales that they could stagger sales over several days based on previous games attended.
2. Away Membership
The club chose to reward 400 fans who had attended 18 away games or more last season with a top tier of away membership.
The club allowed other remaining away members to renew into a second tier or membership, 2100 members.
The club further sold 2500 additional second tier memberships to season ticket holders.
It’s probably worth mentioning I am no fan of these paid membership schemes. In previous years my opinion is that some have effectively used it as queue jump for high demand fixtures (Derby, Play offs, high profile cup ties). This applies to both home and away memberships.
A large number of games during last season at least went on sale to season ticket holders and some even general sale (booking history). Its fair to say that a season ticket holder could have gone to several away games throughout the year without the need for a membership.
Again the further 2500 additional second tier memberships, like the Silver and Bronze home memberships, were sold with no staggered sale based on games attended. In theory a season ticket holder who went to 10 away games last season could have missed out on an away membership to someone who attended 0. And now on a game-by-game basis, in theory someone who attended 17 games last year may miss out on a ticket to someone who went to 0.
I note the point on the trusts Q and A about 42% of fans who attended away games last year having no away membership and such the need to expand the scheme. But then why not implement a staggered sale that rewarded those 42% and not simply opening up to, in theory, people who attended 0. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the new 2500 away members and the number of away games attended last season.
3. Match Ticket Sales Process
For this purpose I’m going to treat the sales process for both home and away matches as the same. Demand is greater than supply for both away tickets and at the point home games go on sale to bronze members (at least so far for WH and Spurs).
There have been inconsistencies here so far. Sometimes there is an online queue, sometimes there isn’t. The online queue is stated as going live 30 minutes before the sale time as per the guidance on the official site but yet that appears to be going live earlier.
As someone who attends gigs on a fairly regular basis I have a basic knowledge of how some of these systems work. When demand outstrips supply, speed is of the essence. Understanding the logic of how the baskets and sessions work, along with persistence can also help. For example lets assume there are 1000 tickets and each person can only buy 1. The first 1000 people each successfully add a ticket to their basket. If you are person 1001 and try to add a ticket to the basket it will state non available. If person 300 (300 chosen as a random example) decides they no longer want the ticket or their payment fails or they get distracted and their basket times out then the ticket will be released and made available again. Lets assume person 1001 sees no tickets available and gives up. If person 1002 is now on the system and is receiving “no tickets available” but continues to try and is the first person to hit add to basket once the ticket from person 300 is released then they will be allocated the ticket.
The above situation helps certain types of people. The tech savvy and also those that are available to spend an hour or so on the ticket site around the time they go on sale (10am on a weekday being Forest preferred time currently). My opinion is that this is using up peoples time unnecessarily even if they are successful. It probably also favours the younger, tech savvy generation. Staggered sales (based on an agreed criteria, though forest appear to want to move away from this) or ballots would take up a lot less time.
4. Questions/Points FAO Trust/Forza Etc
For anyone reading this who may have dialogue with the club I would be interested if you could answer or raise the below points.
1. Based on the fact the club have used the phrase “closed shop”.
- How many unique references were used to attend away games last season?
- How many unique references were used to attend home games last season?
3. Why were staggered sales based on previous attendance not used for the membership sale?
I need to read all 41 pages of this thread
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