Newcastle United owners need to sort this NUFC ticket shambles | OneFootball

The Newcastle United owners really need to sort this out.

Way back in August 2023, I wrote an article for The Mag that was titled ‘Newcastle United away tickets new plan – Law of unintended consequences flagged up for Brighton.’

This was regarding what the Newcastle United owners had introduced for 2023/24 season, whereby Newcastle fans with away tickets now warned that there would be spot checks, whereby if season ticket holders are found to have passed them on to other fans, they could lose all their loyalty points and potentially their season tickets.

At that early season Brighton match, all the tickets had been sold, BUT hundreds of them not used.

Various reasons were put forward as causing / contributing to this, from fans buying a ticket to get the loyalty point but having no intention of going, right through to travel issues and strikes on the trains etc deterring supporters from travelling, even though they had already bought a ticket. Plus the biggest fact of course that the club refuses to allow any away ticket to be passed to any other Newcastle United fan, even if they are also a season ticket holder or member. Whilst once a certain deadline passes a number of days before each away game, you can’t even return your away ticket to NUFC to get a refund AND allow somebody else to buy and use that ticket.

So if say two days before an away game, one day beforehand, or even on the day of the match. If say you suddenly are told you have to work, or you fall ill, or a family emergency needs you, then you lose the money for the away ticket and the seat is unused. Unless of course you want to risk losing all your loyalty points, or even your season ticket, by passing the ticket on.

Eight months on and absolutely nothing has changed, the Newcastle United owners refusing to do anything to correct this ridiculous situation concerning away tickets. With the club confirming they will have NUFC employees at the Burnley match, doing random checks, some travelling fans having been given dud tickets that force them then to go and prove their identity to get a replacement ticket that works. If not doing so, the fan presumed guilty as having passed on their ticket, if they don’t go to get the replacement ticket and prove they were the person who bought the ticket.

This was highlighted yet again by a Newcastle United fan on Twitter, saying that his group of eight, were now unable to get to the Burnley match.

The NUFC fan saying that now they couldn’t go to the match they had a massive dilemma as on Thursday it was already too late to return the tickets, as Newcastle United wouldn’t refund the money and sell them to other Newcastle fans. So, lose hundreds of pounds AND the eight seats left empty, or pass/sell on the tickets and risk losing all their loyalty points and possibly their season tickets. The fan stating that the risk was too great and the seats would remain empty.

This is especially painful when Burnley away sees a low away allocation and it is our closest match, neck and neck with Sheffield United. Coincidentally, two away trips that are set to disappear for next season.

When this Newcastle United fan reported their dilemma on the eight Burnley tickets that were set to be unused, plenty of other NUFC fans replied to the Twitter post, saying they had been in the same position for previous away games this season, whilst a number of others also said they couldn’t now use their Burnley ticket either.

Anyway, I can tell you one thing for sure.

If it hadn’t been for this season’s new club ‘plan’ on Newcastle United away tickets and the warnings / checks on whether tickets are being used by the season ticket holder who bought them, I can guarantee you that like every other previous season, you would have struggled to find a single empty seat in any NUFC away end, including at Burnley tomorrow.

If for whatever reason anybody wasn’t going to be using an away ticket bought for Burnley or any of the other away matches this season, that ticket would have somehow found itself into the hands of another real fan, at face value or less (gifted). That is how it works, the informal network of regular / irregular travelling Newcastle United fans, ensures a full away end, or at least it used to.

Whatever issues the club were trying to solve with this season’s new Newcastle United away tickets plan (and I don’t deny some issues existed), for sure, they haven’t improved the situation and indeed, have made things far far worse.

They need to drop altogether these checks / penalties ASAP, or go back to the drawing board and come up with some ideas on how to tweak what they are doing and reach a more positive outcome.