Who needs the Grinch when Newcastle United ruins your Christmas?
This morning on Christmas Eve I receive an email from the club.
Newcastle United informs me…‘Unfortunately your application for the Mags Member Ballot was unsuccessful for our Carabao Cup match against Manchester City.’
I should be immune to this now, BUT in reality it feels worse and worse.
The daunting nature of it drags you down.
For anyone who doesn’t know how the home ticket works.
In principle, Newcastle United members are given 24 hours to participate in the voting at each Premier League match.
The morning after that opportunity closes, all members will receive an email informing them whether or not you were successful in that specific vote for that specific contest. These emails will be sent approximately one hour before successful voters can then head to the Newcastle United ticketing site to purchase their tickets.
This Christmas Eve morning, the club will send out Manchester City’s emails. I wasn’t even aware this was going to happen, so when I saw it in my emails this morning, after a night out last night, forgive me if I’m not feeling the Christmas love from our football club.
The thing is also that the fact that Newcastle United have so many games at the moment and especially so many at home, it sometimes feels like almost every other day I receive an ‘unfortunate’ email with the result of Newcastle United’s home tickets.
My experience with these Newcastle United home match ballots and my ‘success’ rate is nowhere near what the club claims is the average for members. I know quite a few other Newcastle United members and they are all the same and nowhere near the success rate the club claims.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I was successful in a NUFC Premier League match ticket vote.
The club still refuses to do two things.
Make public how many Newcastle United members there are.
Make public how many tickets will be up for grabs from Newcastle United members on each ballot.
The only conclusion you can draw is that the club does not want to admit how many Newcastle United members there are, nor how few tickets they award on these ballots.
Every (adult) member of Newcastle United pays £37 per season (£20 for children) to take part in the home ballots, and no wonder they don’t want to show how poor your chances are of getting tickets! Many reports claim there are over 100,000 Newcastle United members, so you could be looking at a turnover of around £4 million, that’s before a member has purchased a single ticket…
How few tickets will be made available for Newcastle United ballots? Well, my experience and that of other members I know is that there are very few tickets available indeed.
As I said before: why this secrecy? Why doesn’t the club just tell us how many Newcastle United members there are AND how many tickets they are fighting over?
I still can’t believe how many rejections I’ve had, how many “unfortunately” emails.
Anyway: Merry Christmas!
And for those of you who are going to see the inside of St James’ Park, make sure you appreciate it, because many of us on the outside would love to be in your shoes.
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