onevalefan.co.uk Present Past Specials About Forum
Jump to content
onevalefan.co.uk forum

Advert


Advert


Hartlepool/Walsall - general sale tickets tomorrow


Doha

Recommended Posts

Advert

I’m a season ticket holder but live 150+ miles away (6h round trip for Saturday home games use holiday entitlement for midweek games if have it spare) so left my ST with a friend to add to the tickets he has for his family.  He joined the queue just before 8 and made it to the Railway Paddock turnstile opposite the ticket office as they announced the sell out just before 10.  
 

I’m dIsappointed but feel even more so for my friend and the many SVA who have travelled to many away games this season (eg the 250 or so fanatics who stood out in the monsoon at Bristol Rover on a cold winter’s night - my friend was one of those) and either missed out because they couldn’t get to VP earlier enough this morning or had no chance to begin with since a good proportion might not even be season ticket holders (they’ll have probably missed out on Walsall away too).  There must be a better and/or fairer way forward.
 

The club are never going to keep every fan happy but in the background of their getting  so many other  things right both on and off the pitch at the moment not having a more robust ticketing policy, IMHO, is a missed opportunity.  Successful clubs or those with large fan bases (sometimes these can be mutually exclusive!) will have had to deal with the demand outstripping supply scenario many times with permanent or temporary schemes put in place - loyalty/reward points for going to games etc.  It’s now too late for this season ( if we miss out on auto promotion and end up in the lottery of the playoffs, Wembley ticketing will not be an issue) but the club really need to start to think about this now for next year’s campaign, consulting fans groups  if necessary, to at least show they are listening and agree that their is room for improvement.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Joe B said:

Will preface this by saying I'm not going so I have no vested interest in the situation.

If the rumour that 'hundreds' were given to box holders + friends yesterday is true, leaving only 400 for those who have queued for hours this morning and don't have the luxury of getting there at 5am, then serious questions need to be asked. To 'sell out' in 70 minutes certainly suggests not many were available today, considering the usual speed of the ticket office.

Ticketing system remains a relic of our past. People would have obtained tickets the same way in the 1950s - book off work, queue up, get a physical ticket. It favours local fans over distant ones, and one who are more flexible with work/can rely on family members to go and queue for them. It's a grossly unfair system in many, many ways, without even considering the fact that a pensioner having to get there at 4:30am + a young lad slept in his car to guarantee tickets. An online lottery/queuing system where we type in our ST number and chose a slot for collection would be very easily implemented. Given out free coffee and a scarf is nice and all but distracts from the fact that there will be many Vale fans, far more diehard than I could ever hope to be, who will be driving home from the queue, gutted.

I'm looking at an argument on Facebook where one lad is saying 'you should have got there at 6:30am like me, you're own fault', and another agrees with 'I got there at 5:40am, no problem', and I can only laugh at the state of it.

Hope everyone who goes has a fantastic day, just a shame that 'big game ticketing fiasco' is so predictable and easily avoided. 

Got a coffee would have preferred a ticket!!

Its our Achilles heel and has been for sometime. We have a situation where  fans who have followed the team around the country when we were <ovf censored> can’t get a ticket. That doesn’t feel right.

We need a loyalty/priority scheme for next season, ironically it won’t matter as much if we are in L1 playing in bigger stadiums.

Online ticketing is ok , if it goes in hand with a loyalty scheme, otherwise  it just becomes a lottery.

Whatever we please don’t consult Colchester how to do online ticketing.

I am devastated not be able to get a ticket and only hope we seal the deal at home to Newport.

I wonder how many of the fans going to Exeter I will see at Hartlepool tomorrow?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Rampant Zebra said:

Does that include the ones for season ticket holders who had already bought in good faith via the Exeter website I wonder? 

No RZ. Those tickets have been set aside to be collected for ST holders.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The last game I missed home and away in the league and all cup comps was the televised Walsall game away in December 2015 due to a holiday. I was about ten people away in the queue when it was announced that the game had sold out. A complete waste of a morning but at least it gave me the chance to see a few people happily buying tickets that I hadn’t seen since Brighton in 94. Which is quite a coincidence as 1994 is around about the last time our prehistoric shambles of a ticketing system was updated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This really needs to be sorted out. As others say it's one thing that, if anything, is an even bigger mess than under the ownership of the various incompetent buffoons over the years and is really not in keeping with the good work the Shanahan family and team have done/are doing in other areas. I have just read Colin Garlick in the Sentinel who seems stumped as to how this can be resolved and seems to think it just comes with the territory, which I'm afraid is utter nonsense. 

We desperately need to invest in a solution whereby supporters accrue 'points' for purchasing season tickets/match tickets/away tickets and then base any future ticket sales on this. Determine and decide on a model and off you go. It can be as simple as a point per game with points dropping off after 2 years, for example but the exact model itself can be debated, the fact is there needs to be one. Whether home games accrue more points than away games; how long points remain 'active'; whether there is always an element/percentage of tickets that go to a random ballot/draw etc can all be debated and put in place. We can then, based on a given allocation, determine the cut off in terms of points for any initial sale. Fans with X or more points can log in and purchase their ticket at some point during a given day should they want to attend. No driving to the ground, no queuing around car parks, no sleep deprivation, no hypothermia. After this you lower the requirement so that any left go to fans in the next bracket and so on. This process may not always be needed of course, if we are allocated 5,000 and expect to take 500 then go straight to general sale, but those 500 will bag their sweet little loyalty points.

Other clubs at our level manage it, there's no excuse for what is going on down there. I noticed Swindon put tickets on sale for an away game the other week for fans with 350+ loyalty points initially for example. A model such as this can be created to encourage people to buy tickets and attend games to accrue points, obviously beneficial for the club, as is not pissing off the most loyal supporters by having this shambles every time there is a small allocation, big game, or both.

Come on Port Vale let's sort this nonsense out it's absolutely ludicrous in this day and age and is in absolutely no way a fair way of doing things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good luck to them and all, but I keep laughing at the notion of camping out on the Vale car park to get tickets, or being in your 70s and setting a 4am alarm to head down. This is unhinged. 

There's lads who turned up at 7am and didn't get tickets. 2 hours of waiting for the office to open, sent home ticketless. It's barbaric. Like something out of the Victorian slums. Instant coffee passed around and leftover scarves given out, which the supporters can wear as they listen to the game on their radio.

Folk saying 'clap clap, loyal fans, massive we are' and lots of performative 'I'm a better fan than you, I was there at 5:40am, you should have woken up at 3:30 like the rest of us' going on. It's absolute insanity. Camping out at the Vale! It needs to be recognised as an absolute disaster, and not normalised and celebrated. 

Just a really funny morning, if slightly infuriating. We all love Vale but this is League 2 football and a lad has slept in his car overnight, as fans engage in oneupmanship over who got to Vale earliest and never questioning if the system is a tad broken.

Goodness gracious me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the league we've always had a strong away following, which makes it more surprising that the club didn't foresee this issue months ago. I think the one area they seem to struggle with is attendances. The Brentford game being a great example. 

It's a Premier League club which is going to attract a bigger gate. At 3:10pm on that Saturday there were still people trying to get in, it was made even worse by having the barrier in place down the side of the ground making queuing a real pain. As said previously, imagine that being your first experience at Vale Park. That should have been worked out well before the game, put temp barriers in place to show supporters where to queue. 

The club should make buying tickets and getting into the ground the easiest thing you can do. The fairest way when limited allocation is involved is a loyalty scheme or better negotiations with the opposition club to acquire more tickets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately no easy solution to this perhaps not even a solution at all ! 
It all goes with the territory of ‘success’ . 
Probably guarantee that some who are fortunate to have ‘acquired’ a ticket for Exeter haven’t been to a handful of games this season home or away, if any at all . Would be interesting to know how many of those queuing at ridiculous times this morning we’re at Barrow , Crawley, Hartlepool tomorrow and the like .
You see people on here saying ‘not been for years, really excited’ , simple question is ‘why not’ answer equals ‘well we’re doing well now ‘ !!

It will always happen, I feel sorry for the hierarchy at Vale there is no straightforward answer and as an example 1200 Exeter tickets won’t cover the potential demand of over perhaps in the region of 6k people wanting them so what are they supposed to do ?

There are many suggested ways to attempt to solve this however not one will solve everyone’s unless they get a ticket . Sometimes you just have to take it on the chin and get on with it. 
For the record I didn’t get one either !

UTV 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Rocky said:


The club should make buying tickets and getting into the ground the easiest thing you can do.

Yep. Vale still have not moved on from our historic attitude of making it as difficult as possible for you to give them money. Particularly if you're not fortunate enough to live in the area.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Reporting Posts and other information

    Rules - This forum is moderated but the admin team don't read everything. Don't assume we'll spot rule breaking and alert us by reporting content. Logged in users can hover over the post and click the orange button. Guests can contact us here. If you don't get on with another user you can "ignore" them. Click this link, type in their username and click save. Please check with the admin team if you wish to sell/auction any items. We're happy to support good causes but check first.

    Use - This forum may not be suitable for all as it may contain words or phrases not considered appropriate for some. You are personally responsible and potentially liable for the contents of your posting and could face legal action should it contain content of a defamatory or other illegal nature. Every message posted leaves a traceable IP number. Please do not reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example: phone number, address or email address). This forum is not in any way affiliated with Port Vale FC. OVF reserve the right to edit, delete, move or close any thread for any reason. If you spot an offensive post please report it to the admin team (instructions are above).

    Adverts - This site occasionally a) has adverts and sponsored features about gambling b) accepts sponsored posts from third parties. If you require help and advice on gambling read these links: Information on protecting young people | Addiction help from gambleaware.co.uk
  • Friends of OVF

×
×
  • Create New...