I have written before on The Mag about receiving the dreaded Newcastle United home ticket ballot result email.
When I say ‘dreaded’, that isn’t really true, not anymore anyway.
I treat it now a bit like the national lottery result.
As in, I never really think about it and I am only vaguely aware of when the Newcastle United home ticket ballot result email is expected, BUT just like the lottery, it is an afterthought when I eventually make the effort to find out that I haven’t won!
For anybody who isn’t aware of how the home ticketing thing works.
Basically, every Premier League game the Newcastle United members are given 24 hours to enter the ballot.
Then the morning after that window of opportunity closes, all of the members receive an email, saying whether or not you have been successful in that particular ballot, for that particular match. These emails sent out around about an hour before the successful ballot entrants can then go on the Newcastle United ticketing site to buy their tickets.
The thing is, when I do end up checking my emails, you don’t even have to open the club email up, as I can always see that the opening line starts with ‘unfortunately’ when they send me each Newcastle United home ticket ballot result email.
A ‘refreshing’ change though this (Wednesday) morning (only hours after that late killer Spurs goal…).
At 10.51am on Wednesday morning I have received an ‘unfortunately’ Newcastle United home ticket ballot result email for the Crystal Palace match.
As well as…
At 10.51am on Wednesday morning I have received an ‘unfortunately’ Newcastle United home ticket ballot result email for the Leeds United match.
Yes, two ‘unfortunately’ emails received at exactly the same time.
I don’t know why they didn’t add ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR’ to the two emails!
Or why not just put the two negatives on the same email?
Even better, why not just send a single ‘Happy New Year’ email and say ‘unfortunately’ for all the remaining home Premier League matches this season???
Yet again
Once again, I have to say that my experience of these Newcastle United home ticket ballots and my ‘success’ rate, is nowhere near what the club have claimed the average is for members. I know a fair few other Newcastle United members and they are all the same, getting nothing like the success rate that the club claim.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I was successful in an NUFC Premier League match ticket ballot.
The club still refuse to do two things.
Make public how many Newcastle United members there are.
Make public how many tickets are up for grabs by those Newcastle United members in each ballot.
The only conclusions you can draw, are that the club don’t want to admit just how many Newcastle United members there are, nor how few tickets they allocate to these ballots.
Each (adult) Newcastle United member pays £37 per season (£20 for kids) to allow them to enter home ticket ballots and no wonder they don’t want to let on how poor your odds are of getting tickets! Many reports claim there are more than 100,000 Newcastle United members, so you could be looking at that generating revenue of around £4m, which is before any member has bought a single ticket…
As for how few tickets are made available to Newcastle United ballots? Well, my experience and that of other members I know, is that there must be very few tickets indeed that are made available.
As I said earlier, why the secrecy? Why don’t the club just tell us how many Newcastle United members there are AND how many tickets they are fighting over? Then we can all make an informed decision on whether or not it is worth paying the £37 again?
It doesn’t fill you with much hope when you factor in that these two matches (Palace and Leeds) are both in the first week in January, one a Sunday and the other a Wednesday night, a time of year when people are usually skint and looking to recover from Christmas, yet a double knockback in these ballots and the misery goes on.