Away Tickets - What's the magic?

[john e]

It’s a known fact that many of the top tier buy tickets regardless of their ability to attend the game or not, purely to safeguard their eligibility. There’s nothing that club can do in order to prevent this as it stands, it’ll only be addressed once tickets have names on and ID is needed to gain entry. Until then, it’ll be the same, it’s  just how it is.

It's not many.
It's a few. In my experience.
There is inevitably a "fear" of not being able to get tickets for games, and I would say the vast majority have every intention of going to the games they get tickets for, but that fear drives the "closed shop" nature of the system we have.
We used to have an away season ticket system which was rightly binned.
So what do we do?
I agree, it will only be resolved when specific tickets are attributed to specific owners, but how do we decide who is eligible and who isn't?
A few recent away situations have been interesting...admission was by NFC tickets only...fair enough. But when my mate's daughter was poorly a few days before the game her ticket for the match, nor the coach, could be returned or refunded, and my mate couldn't go either as he is her PA. In the old days their tickets could have been passed on to grateful friends or family, but this simply couldn't happen, which meant two empty coach seats and two empty seats in the stadium. A genuine case with a very unsatisfactory outcome.
I have no idea what the answer is.

Forgive my ignorance but what’s a NFC ticket

Near Field Communication.
Like paying for stuff with your phone.
YOUR ticket is on YOUR phone...you can't pass it on and there are no alternatives.
It only works when interracting with another device...ie the ticket reader.
It's not a QR code.
You can't screenshot it....you simply won't get in.

A few typical FAQs...
Q. What if I don't have a smart phone?
A. You can't have a ticket.

Q. How do I pass my ticket on to my friend?
A. You don't. You contact us, we cancel it and we resell it.


A few clubs/venues have the facility for sharing tickets but only to a named recipient with an account/id etc.

It's the future!

Oh thanks for the info
I didn’t know that

[RamboandBruno]

No, you're right Rambo, I did make comments about SOME people only wanting to go to the big stadiums etc, but as I say, I am only going on personal experience...one saying they wanted to go to Spurs because they'd never been and commentators said it was a great stadium...supporting The Villa was never mentioned!

I only had breaks from going regularly in the late 70s....I was playing most Sat afternoons....and mid 80s when my lad was born. Simply never had a ST until about 20 odd years ago, just habit I think.
I got the away bug at about your lad's age and just loved it, made great friends and had some wonderful days with the Villa faithful. The last 12/14 or so years I've hardly missed a game...my last 3 holidays have been during the International breaks...the love just grows and I don't want to miss any of it the way we're going atm!!!
I know full well many simply can't organise their lives the way I could/can but I am sure your lad will get the chance of away games now and again and, however the club chooses to do things in future, that he will get to many more.
Well done with sharing the love with your boy! UTV!

Cheers, great memories being made for all of us at the moment, one of the best years of my Villa supporting life. Well hopefully we’ll beat Boro on Saturday, which I cant even watch on TV as its the wifes bhday meal out, then get another away draw.
Anyway, keep on enjoying this great ride under Emery, UTV.

[darren woolley]

It’s a known fact that many of the top tier buy tickets regardless of their ability to attend the game or not, purely to safeguard their eligibility. There’s nothing that club can do in order to prevent this as it stands, it’ll only be addressed once tickets have names on and ID is needed to gain entry. Until then, it’ll be the same, it’s  just how it is.

It's not many.
It's a few. In my experience.
There is inevitably a "fear" of not being able to get tickets for games, and I would say the vast majority have every intention of going to the games they get tickets for, but that fear drives the "closed shop" nature of the system we have.
We used to have an away season ticket system which was rightly binned.
So what do we do?
I agree, it will only be resolved when specific tickets are attributed to specific owners, but how do we decide who is eligible and who isn't?
A few recent away situations have been interesting...admission was by NFC tickets only...fair enough. But when my mate's daughter was poorly a few days before the game her ticket for the match, nor the coach, could be returned or refunded, and my mate couldn't go either as he is her PA. In the old days their tickets could have been passed on to grateful friends or family, but this simply couldn't happen, which meant two empty coach seats and two empty seats in the stadium. A genuine case with a very unsatisfactory outcome.
I have no idea what the answer is.

Forgive my ignorance but what’s a NFC ticket

Near Field Communication.
Like paying for stuff with your phone.
YOUR ticket is on YOUR phone...you can't pass it on and there are no alternatives.
It only works when interracting with another device...ie the ticket reader.
It's not a QR code.
You can't screenshot it....you simply won't get in.

A few typical FAQs...
Q. What if I don't have a smart phone?
A. You can't have a ticket.

Q. How do I pass my ticket on to my friend?
A. You don't. You contact us, we cancel it and we resell it.


A few clubs/venues have the facility for sharing tickets but only to a named recipient with an account/id etc.

It's the future!

What about if your phone breaks or you lose your phone ?

[amfy]

I guess you would need to get in touch with the club in the same way you might if you lost your ticket.

[ChicagoLion]

I guess you would need to get in touch with the club in the same way you might if you lost your ticket.

Without a phone?

[frankmosswasmyuncle]

I guess you would need to get in touch with the club in the same way you might if you lost your ticket.

Without a phone?

Can you imagine the fun at the turnstile?


I think the answer on the ManU site was something like..."Tough shit".

[artvandelay]

There's Villa stewards at the turnstile for precisely this reason, they can direct you to the Away ticket office, also open for this reason.

Separately on the NFC's, it was only within google wallet you couldn't transfer them. Absolutely nothing stopped you forwarding the email and opening them on another phone

[VillaTim]

I guess you would need to get in touch with the club in the same way you might if you lost your ticket.

Without a phone?

client ref number and some ID with photo and they might be able to sort something

[frankmosswasmyuncle]

There's Villa stewards at the turnstile for precisely this reason, they can direct you to the Away ticket office, also open for this reason.

Separately on the NFC's, it was only within google wallet you couldn't transfer them. Absolutely nothing stopped you forwarding the email and opening them on another phone

Yes there is....and they can. But there is nothing they can do about NFC tickets.

My mate's daughter tried to do exactly that. It wouldn't forward to another email address.
She contacted the TO after the horse had bolted and she was told that had she been in time she could have returned to ticket to the TO who would have then sold it on to someone who was eligible/in the queue. She had no say on who it went to.

[HolteL4]

It’s a known fact that many of the top tier buy tickets regardless of their ability to attend the game or not, purely to safeguard their eligibility. There’s nothing that club can do in order to prevent this as it stands, it’ll only be addressed once tickets have names on and ID is needed to gain entry. Until then, it’ll be the same, it’s  just how it is.

It's not many.
It's a few. In my experience.
There is inevitably a "fear" of not being able to get tickets for games, and I would say the vast majority have every intention of going to the games they get tickets for, but that fear drives the "closed shop" nature of the system we have.
We used to have an away season ticket system which was rightly binned.
So what do we do?
I agree, it will only be resolved when specific tickets are attributed to specific owners, but how do we decide who is eligible and who isn't?
A few recent away situations have been interesting...admission was by NFC tickets only...fair enough. But when my mate's daughter was poorly a few days before the game her ticket for the match, nor the coach, could be returned or refunded, and my mate couldn't go either as he is her PA. In the old days their tickets could have been passed on to grateful friends or family, but this simply couldn't happen, which meant two empty coach seats and two empty seats in the stadium. A genuine case with a very unsatisfactory outcome.
I have no idea what the answer is.

It depends on which version you are on about,  the 1st version where you were automatically sent the ticket and had to send it back if you couldn't go. Which then meant it eventually did go back on sale but possibly after it was already sold out so people had stopped looking which meant people did miss out so that was rightly binned.  But the 2nd version of it was OK imo, i was in it, i think it was £40 pound to join (also think it was capped at around 1k) all that meant was you was 1st in line for all league away games you had to buy them the same way as everyone you wasn't automatically sent them so if you didn't buy the ticket, which meant if i didn't go the ticket i was eligible for filtered down to the next tier for someone to buy. so there was no Sold Out then randomly bunches of tickets becoming available because those on the scheme had returned the ticket.

[artvandelay]

There's Villa stewards at the turnstile for precisely this reason, they can direct you to the Away ticket office, also open for this reason.

Separately on the NFC's, it was only within google wallet you couldn't transfer them. Absolutely nothing stopped you forwarding the email and opening them on another phone

Yes there is....and they can. But there is nothing they can do about NFC tickets.

My mate's daughter tried to do exactly that. It wouldn't forward to another email address.
She contacted the TO after the horse had bolted and she was told that had she been in time she could have returned to ticket to the TO who would have then sold it on to someone who was eligible/in the queue. She had no say on who it went to.

There's no mechanism to block forwarding of an email to another email address. However, there can be notifications to original sender, and the subsequent sending can be tracked. No idea whether Villa will have done that.

I was able to send both to my work phone on a different email as a backup. They QR/NFC thingy then was on both phones. I know of others who bought off people who just forwarded the email to them.

[frankmosswasmyuncle]

There's Villa stewards at the turnstile for precisely this reason, they can direct you to the Away ticket office, also open for this reason.

Separately on the NFC's, it was only within google wallet you couldn't transfer them. Absolutely nothing stopped you forwarding the email and opening them on another phone

Yes there is....and they can. But there is nothing they can do about NFC tickets.

My mate's daughter tried to do exactly that. It wouldn't forward to another email address.
She contacted the TO after the horse had bolted and she was told that had she been in time she could have returned to ticket to the TO who would have then sold it on to someone who was eligible/in the queue. She had no say on who it went to.

There's no mechanism to block forwarding of an email to another email address. However, there can be notifications to original sender, and the subsequent sending can be tracked. No idea whether Villa will have done that.

I was able to send both to my work phone on a different email as a backup. They QR/NFC thingy then was on both phones. I know of others who bought off people who just forwarded the email to them.

I can only report what my, and others', experience was.
I purchased the NFC tickets - QR code is completely different - for my mate and his daughter. The emails were sent directly to them, individually. When they realised they couldn't go she tried to forward the email to her Dad....it wouldn't go. My mate and his daughter tried to forward the emails to me...they wouldn't forward.
I've said what happened when she contacted the TO...they made it very clear that the NFC tickets were not transferable to any other individual. It goes to the owner's email to be downloaded on to the owner's phone. There are exceptions but they have to be made well in advance and with the full say so of the club.
You can imagine my mate's dissatisfaction re: the whole thing....he'd paid £30 for each match ticket and about the same for coach tickets, which are non-refundable.
I think if he could simply have forwarded an email to save £120, he'd have done it.
And several other people I know had identical experiences.

QR codes can be transferred easily to phones and for printing off...in fact The Villa advise you to print them off in advance of the game to avoid mobile phone issues at the turnstile.
You can't print NFC tickets, photoshop them or blag a copy of the email with no ticket thing.
I'm only stating what the TO told me and my experiences above.

If you know of any ways round it, you're on to a winner!

[frankmosswasmyuncle]

It’s a known fact that many of the top tier buy tickets regardless of their ability to attend the game or not, purely to safeguard their eligibility. There’s nothing that club can do in order to prevent this as it stands, it’ll only be addressed once tickets have names on and ID is needed to gain entry. Until then, it’ll be the same, it’s  just how it is.

It's not many.
It's a few. In my experience.
There is inevitably a "fear" of not being able to get tickets for games, and I would say the vast majority have every intention of going to the games they get tickets for, but that fear drives the "closed shop" nature of the system we have.
We used to have an away season ticket system which was rightly binned.
So what do we do?
I agree, it will only be resolved when specific tickets are attributed to specific owners, but how do we decide who is eligible and who isn't?
A few recent away situations have been interesting...admission was by NFC tickets only...fair enough. But when my mate's daughter was poorly a few days before the game her ticket for the match, nor the coach, could be returned or refunded, and my mate couldn't go either as he is her PA. In the old days their tickets could have been passed on to grateful friends or family, but this simply couldn't happen, which meant two empty coach seats and two empty seats in the stadium. A genuine case with a very unsatisfactory outcome.
I have no idea what the answer is.

It depends on which version you are on about,  the 1st version where you were automatically sent the ticket and had to send it back if you couldn't go. Which then meant it eventually did go back on sale but possibly after it was already sold out so people had stopped looking which meant people did miss out so that was rightly binned.  But the 2nd version of it was OK imo, i was in it, i think it was £40 pound to join (also think it was capped at around 1k) all that meant was you was 1st in line for all league away games you had to buy them the same way as everyone you wasn't automatically sent them so if you didn't buy the ticket, which meant if i didn't go the ticket i was eligible for filtered down to the next tier for someone to buy. so there was no Sold Out then randomly bunches of tickets becoming available because those on the scheme had returned the ticket.

Spot on HL4!
I didn't do the first one for exactly that reason of the inconvenience of having to send the ticket back...the 2nd one worked much better for me and for almost everyone I knew.

[chrisw1]

Without wanting to be too much of a prick Frank, haven't you previously said you believe very few people sell on away tickets?

Now you're giving an example of two people plus several others you personally know who have had the same experience.  And this is just for aways with NFC tickets, which I think is a very small minority.

Apologies if it wasn't you, but doesn't this prove the point that many people have been making? 

[claret+blue ed]

Without wanting to be too much of a prick Frank, haven't you previously said you believe very few people sell on away tickets?

Now you're giving an example of two people plus several others you personally know who have had the same experience.  And this is just for aways with NFC tickets, which I think is a very small minority.

Apologies if it wasn't you, but doesn't this prove the point that many people have been making? 

I joined a facebook page for Villa tickets earlier this week and loads are looking to get rid of them for Middlesbrough, even a batch of 5 who are all now working, if this is true and not just a load of scammers, it is ridiculous the amount of tickets that seem to be available, why couldn't they just leave them for the next in line