Didn't Get A City Ticket? Here's Why...

In the 2010-2011, 164,000 applications were made by fans for Manchester United’s away fixtures, which works out, on average, at around 8,630 applications per game. However, there were just 55,000 tickets available, an average of 2,890 per game.

Roughly a third of our tickets go to fans in in the loyalty pot, who have applied for every away game since December 2002. Two years ago the club planned to do away with the loyalty pot but thanks to protests from the fans they decided to keep it. Another third of our tickets go to executive members and the rest go to everyone else. To even apply for away tickets through the club you have to be a season ticket holder and pay for every cup game and the chances of you being successful are slim to none these days. For example, I’ve applied for every away game this season and not had any luck, and this story is becoming more and more common. You can talk to some people who have applied for every game for the past few seasons with very little, if any, successful ballots to speak of.

Last season RoM looked at a travel company who somehow got their hands on United’s away tickets, and were selling them on at extortionate prices. You could buy as many as eight at once and didn’t even have to hold United membership to buy them. Where are they getting our tickets from, which we have to pay a fortune for to even be in a chance of getting one?

Now, as we can see from the e-mail above, even the club are getting in on the action for ripping the fans off. Why on earth are away tickets for one of the biggest games of the season being given away to businesses who pay for match day suites? It’s absolutely scandalous. When looking at what fans have paid already this season, looking at average prices, it works out at £700 (season ticket) + £40 (League Cup vs Newcastle) + £120 (three CL group stage games) = £860. The FA Cup and knock-out stages of the Champions League are still to come.

For the derby last season, there were 16,000 applications for the 2,600 tickets available, meaning just one in six reds who applied got a ticket. And this is the game the club choose to give away to random businesses this season, who probably couldn’t give a fuck less about City away anyway. What a joke.