When Sunderland announced the ‘Black Cats Membership’ scheme in the summer, my first reaction was that it would make it much more difficult to get tickets for home matches.
This was based on the expectation that most non-season card holders who go to more than one or two games a season — like me — would pay for the membership, albeit reluctantly. I thought there would be more members than tickets available on a match-by-match basis; that none would go on general sale and therefore membership would be the only
way I was going to get tickets.
So I spent £126 on two adult and one under-eighteen memberships for myself and my two teenage children. As Brett, a fellow exile, said recently on the Haway the Podcast, it was “FOMO”: Fear Of Missing Out.
Last season, I was able to get tickets for all the games we wanted to by grabbing them as soon as they went on sale and so we went to eight home games: West Ham, Wolves, Villa, The Visitors, Brighton, Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea. I didn’t want to miss out on trying to get to the Stadium of Light this season, especially with European games to look forward to.
When the first ballot of this season for the Fulham game took place I was pleasantly surprised to get confirmation we had secured three tickets — luck of the draw, maybe.
When tickets later went on general sale, I wondered whether there were fewer ballot applicants than expected. Perhaps, I thought, this was because it was Fulham and other non-season card members were holding back for more glamorous games to come, and the same thing happened for the second ballot.
We got tickets for Arsenal, and they too later went on general sale.
Now, I started to think there weren’t as many non-season card members as I thought. Again though, I wondered if the 8pm kick-off on a Saturday night was a factor for those travelling from afar and reliant on public transport or a long car journey, like us. Plus, the night before the Great North Run and overnight accommodation will be like hens’ teeth….or maybe I was just really lucky with the ballots.
We applied for the AZ Alkmaar ballot and were again very happy to secure tickets for Sunderland’s first European game for more than half a century. Again, they went on general sale and quickly sold out.
So, that’s three ballots entered and tickets secured, with all three games going to general sale.
The club hasn’t said how many non-season card memberships have been sold, and they’re not very likely to share this information anytime soon. But I suspect it’s less than 5,000.
That’s roughly the number of tickets available on a match-by-match basis, taking into account the 37,500 season cards mentioned by the club and Premier League rules stating a minimum of 3,000 away fans (or 10% if capacity is less than 30,000). If all three home games so far have gone to general sale, it’s hard to see how there are more than 5,000 non-season card members as surely they would have been snapped up by members.
So why are non-season card holders not buying the Black Cats membership? Firstly, cost.
£48 per adult and £30 per U18 is not cheap, and as well as the actual cost, there’s value for money.
Other than the ticket ballots, there’s not much else to really tempt you. Access to selected U21 games or live streaming, 25% off stadium tours that until this week weren’t even available, and “exclusive” digital content and competitions are not really the perks that are going to make you part with your hard-earned money.
It also looks like plenty of non-season card holders were prepared to take the chance that tickets would go to general sale — they didn’t succumb to FOMO. As long as enough people take this stance, it’s a good one, and it only becomes a problem if more people buy memberships and apply for the ballots leaving no tickets on general sale.
One of the justifications the club used when introducing the membership scheme was that Sunderland was one of only a handful of clubs that didn’t have one. They also spoke about the need to maximise income, given the SCR rules.
Therefore, they would’ve realistically hoped to raise a significant amount from the scheme and although we don’t know the number, given my experience to date, it seems to be much lower than they hoped. Finding reliable figures on membership numbers at other clubs is impossible because they do not publish them.
Transfermarket has some numbers — 5,000 at Fulham, 30,000 at Chelsea, 88,000 at the visitors, and 130,000 at Arsenal – although even these aren’t official and each membership scheme has its own tiers, costs and perks, so they aren’t really comparable. We also know the visitors like to exaggerate when it comes to attendances and that sort of thing.
Selfishly, the membership scheme has been good for me and others fortunate enough to be able to afford it. However, for a club like Sunderland, this isn’t a great look if creates a two tier system for non-season card holders.
It also doesn’t seem to have generated the income the club hoped and it’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for the scheme and what (if anything), the club does to try to attract more members.
