Newcastle United make big changes to ticket allocations for next season after fan feedback
Perhaps the only thing more frequent than a new Newcastle United player getting injured last season was a fan voicing their disdain for the ballot system for home match tickets.
The ballot system was implemented by the club as a way to ensure maximum fairness when it came to ticket allocations for home games, however, in practice, it was anything but.
It was a convoluted system that barely worked and offered fans little to no choice of where they could sit or how much their ticket would cost.
The system was tweaked through the season to be a bit more transparent, but fans were still not happy with how it worked.
Newcastle United have made some big changes to the ticketing system
After consultation with fans via a survey, the Newcastle United Supporters Trust, and the Fan Advisory Board, the club has made significant changes to how the ballot works which you can read in full on their website.
The cliff notes version is that home ticket ballots will be available to The Mags+, Mags and Junior Mags members as they were last season, but now, once a member has been successful in the ballot, they will have a 48-hour period to select their preferred seating area and pay for their ticket(s).
After the ballot allocation has been filled, a member general sale period will begin which will offer tickets on a first-come-first-served basis to those members who were unsuccessful in the ballot.
Members looking for general sale tickets will have to act fast once they get access to the site
The club has also changed how members will access the ticketing site, and a new queue system has been implemented.
"Members logging in before tickets go on sale will be held in an online queue. Once tickets go on sale, all members waiting to purchase a ticket will be randomly assigned a designated queue number. This stops supporters needing to log in hours in advance and supports efforts to combat ticket touting “bots”.
"Once at the front of the queue, supporters will have TEN MINUTES to access the website and complete their purchase. If they fail to do so, they will be moved to the back of the queue."
These are all positive sounding changes, now all that remains to be seen is how it works in practice and if, indeed, it stops all the fighting online over who is the biggest fan and deserves the tickets more.
