Newcastle United sent out an email to its members today.
The email (see below) requested supporters to respond to a brief questionnaire.
“Your opportunity to help shape Newcastle United Memberships!… 2024/25 Membership Coming Soon,” the club announced.
Official club email to Newcastle United Members – 20 March 2024:
‘Your opportunity to help shape Newcastle United Memberships!
We’d like to invite you to participate in a brief survey regarding our Newcastle United Memberships. The feedback form below will take less than 5 minutes to complete, and your input will provide valuable insights into what matters most to our fans.
All entrants who complete the survey by 12pm on Friday 22 March will have the opportunity to win two spaces on an exclusive tour of our training ground!
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
This review of our Memberships and how we can best offer value to our fans is separate to the ongoing fan consultation regarding our ticketing and ballot processes.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
2024/25 Membership Coming Soon’
I had to laugh, if any of you are Newcastle United Members like me, you will share the joke.
The overwhelming majority of Newcastle United Members finding this season’s membership an absolute shambles, zero transparency from the club as they refuse to say how many memberships have been sold (no cap put on the numbers unlike last season), refuse to say how many tickets are available for each match to members, nor do they say how many members enter each ballot. Other clubs, such as Arsenal, are transparent and give these kind of stats for each match.
Anyway, Darren Eales claimed earlier this season that Newcastle United Members were having an average 35% success rate in home ticket ballots and yet for myself and all other members I know, I don’t know anybody who has that kind of success rate and the reality for most is around 20% at best and often far worse…
Anyway, despite my anger and frustration at how the club are treating Newcastle United members, I did have to have a wry smile, hollow laugh, at this part of today’s email.
So the club email all Newcastle United Members, if whom almost all will say getting tickets has been a nightmare, yet the prize draw for those who fill in this survey, the prize STILL doesn’t get you inside St James’ Park if you win, just the training ground!
So you don’t get tickets for a match even if you win their bloody Newcastle United Members competition…
Yes, we await with interest to see just what Newcastle United Members can look forward to next season.
The bottom line is that people are only buying memberships to try and get tickets.
Forget about all the other nonsense and just be transparent on how many memberships are getting sold and how many tickets are being made available in each ballot.
Give us the stats for this season and then at least fans can make an informed decision on whether it is worth paying £37 (this season’s adult membership price) or whatever…
Last summer, the club also promised in an official release that three ticket packages for the Champions League matches would be made available to Newcastle United Members, after season ticket holders had been given their chance to take up the three ticket package. However, this never happened and the club didn’t even have the decency to give an explanation to members as to why they didn’t do this.
From my experience, this is the kind of thing that really upsets fans, when the club promise to do something and then renege on it.
