This Thursday morning saw the PSV ticket ballot announcement.
I have written before on The Mag about receiving the dreaded Newcastle United home ticket ballot result email.
For anybody who isn’t aware of how the home ticketing thing works.
Basically, every home game the Newcastle United members are given 24 hours to enter the ticket 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.
Sure enough, this morning I had a look at me emails, there was the usual ‘unfortunately’ email.
That swiftly following on from the ballots for Palace, Leeds, Chelsea, Fulham, Burnley etc etc etc ones had preceded this PSV ticket ballot one, all of them ‘unfortunately’, as usual.
Yet 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, never mind a Champions League one.
It has become a bit of a running joke amongst the other Newcastle United members that I know, we all have an ironic joke/laugh at the lack of success in home ticket ballots, their stories very similar to mine.
You often end up seeing the result by chance, rather than waiting with bated breath for the email result to arrive. A bit like the national lottery, the chances are so miniscule, get around to check if you have won when you remember.
I texted some of these NUFC members this morning when I saw my latest knockback, their replies confirming the same. Then one replied saying he had been prompted to check his emails by my text and he had won the PSV ticket ballot!
I asked him if he was going to ask the organisers to keep his huge win private and he confirmed that yes, he won’t be doing any media stuff and intends to remain anonymous to the wider fanbase. Just in case the number of begging letters gets out of control and/or requests asking for advice on how he got this huge success. Has he a secret formula, or was it just random that his number was picked out…
Refusal by Newcastle United owners to do the right thing
The Newcastle United owners 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?