The demand for tickets to watch Norwich at Wembley has been astronomical. It’s nothing more than you would expect though. Carrow Road has been sold out nearly every week this season, and the away support has been equally strong. It’s also Norwich’s first visit to the new Wembley, with their last playoff final being played at the Millennium Stadium, in 2002.
However, the club’s ticketing system has left many frustrated.
The first batch of tickets went on sale to season ticket holders and ‘Priority Members’ who could buy their tickets from as early as 6pm on Saturday, approximately 5 hours after Hoolahan opened the scoring in front of the Barclay. Such an offer seemed fair; those who have been following City all season get priority – their loyalty is rewarded.
Actually, that’s not the case at all. If you look a little closer, you can see the spite in their ways.
In the week leading up to the first playoff semi-final, the club offered the chance for standard members to purchase a ‘Priority Membership’ for the fee of £20. A money-making scheme like no other, with thousands of people choosing to take this offer up in the fear they may miss out.
The club seemingly undermined those fans who have invested time, money and passion across the course of the season for an extra bit of cash. Many of those fans have been season ticket holders who have been to every game. Others: exiled Canary fans who have ‘away season tickets’ and have clocked up a four-figure milage total, covering the length and breadth of the country.
Fair enough though, if the demand is there, it makes financial sense to supply that demand. That’s just basic, basic economics. But you can’t help feel they sold out their most loyal supporters in doing so.
At the other end of the spectrum further issues arise. With so many priority members having bought tickets, the numbers left are diminishing rapidly. It’s estimated that 15,000 were sold in the first two hours on Saturday evening.
There’s yet another twist. Standard members won’t actually have priority to purchase a ticket on Wednesday, as many originally thought. Instead, the club have offered S.T.H and P.Ms the chance to buy an extra ticket per customer number. Whether that’s fair is up for you to decide.
Basically, if you haven’t got a priority membership, you’re stuffed…unless you’ve got a willing friend who has. In fact, the saturation of the priority membership has rendered anything less practically useless. You’re either a priority member or not a member at all.
Further complaints have accumulated over the purchasing system itself. Tickets have been available online, at Carrow Road’s ticket office, and over the phone.
As David McNally explained today, the “system is as good as any. It can deal with 600-700 people at any time online, which is a huge chunk of people.
“At one point, we had 7000 people waiting. We did 15,000 tickets on Saturday night in a couple of hours – you can’t do that if the system doesn’t work, so clearly it does work.”
On the whole, it’s seems to have coped adequately – as well as you would expect given the sheer demand. A few unlucky (or just slow) customers experienced the pain of waiting through a 1.5hr queue, only to exceed the 5 minute purchase reservation time. Oops.
Only the third tier is now available with the majority of tickets having been sold. There’s going to be an almighty scramble on Wednesday, and inevitably a few disappointed faces when people miss out.
Let me know your thoughts or issues in the comments below. Should more casual tickets have been offered given that the capacity of Carrow Road is 27,000 and the Wembley allocation 39,000?
