Social media is ful of Saints fans complaining that Spurs are ripping us off by charging us £25 a ticket for the replay, when the game at St Mary's was only £10, but is this the whole truth ?
Social media is away with Saints supporter venting their angst at the fact that Spurs are charging us £25 and yet it was only £10 for the home game, some are even claiming that they will boycott the game next week due to this gross act by Tottenham Hotspur.
Examples on twitter include.
andrew l davis
@hampshirehogsfc
Replying to @SouthamptonFC
So Tottenham fans pay £10 Saturday and we have to pay £25!!! Disgraceful and greedy pure and simple
A. Whettingsteel
@AWhettingsteel
Replying to @SouthamptonFC
Disgusting! It’s not the final. Albeit Spurs you might think so!
Stuart Vahid
@StuartVahid
Replying to @SouthamptonFC
As a club we have got to start getting nastier to away fans with regard pricing, when 30 was max we did a season subsiding then to 20 only a handful of clubs repaid the gesture. Make them pay the max #saintsfc
There are two points to make here before I start, firstly I am no lover of Tottenham Hotspur and find most they do abhorrent and secondly I do think that many of the fans have got a point to varying degrees, but sometimes facts are stretched a little.
The first fact that is being stretched is that Saints charged £10 for the Spurs game across the board, this in not quite correct, the £10 price was not the standard ticket price, that was set at £20 for an advance ticket, not that much cheaper than the £25 that Spurs are charging.
Saints discounted the ticket to £10 for season ticket holders only and this was for a period of 24 hours when the tickets first went on sale, this was done by the club to give something back to season ticket holders who had been complaining that earlier in the season selling cheap tickets for the Watford & Norwich home games was unfair to those supporters who had paid up front for the entire season.
After that first 24 hour period the ticket price was £20 for everyone including season ticket holders who had not purchased at the discount price and indeed the price on the day was £25.
So the reality is that the bulk of the adult Saints supporters on Saturday paid £20 or more. If the club hadn't given season ticket holders £10 off then there would not be the moaning about the price on social media that there is now.
Secondly clubs can charge their normal full price in the FA Cup if they want, discounted prices have to be agreed between the two clubs, so if Spurs had wanted to charge full whack we would not have been able to do anything about it, indeed it would have perhaps suited us financially to let them have done so as we get 40% of the gate receipts.
Both clubs would have agreed the ticketing before the original game was played and indeed Spurs could have refused to let Saints discount tickets, what had to be done though was that whatever the price, the home club has to charge the same to the away club for the same ticket category, therefore we had to let Spurs have £10 tickets as long as they were sold to season ticket holders, which they easily where, if their season ticket holders had not taken up the full amount of tickets then the rest would have been £20 to them.
So although £25 is a little higher than the base selling price of £20 that Saints charged it is still cheaper than the Premier League away ticket cap and still reasonable given the context of the match.
Perhaps just how fact can be turned into fiction is shown by Stuart Vahid's tweet where he claims that Saints used to give away fans £10 off but few clubs reciprocated, this statement has no actual truth in it.
Whilst yes away fans paid £20 at St Mary's for a while, this was done via a subsidy by Virgin Media, not as part of their Saints sponsorship, but through their partnership with the Football Supporters Federation's twenty's plenty campaign, Saints received the full £30 per ticket. Virgin Media thought it made sense to pay this subsidy at St Mary's being our shirt sponsor as it would give both them and the club maximum publicity, however due to some Saints fans constantly complaining and not actually bothering to check the facts, the scheme was withdrawn as it was actually negatively impacting on both club and sponsor meaning that the real losers where the travelling fans, both ours and every other club in the Premier League.
When we paid £20 for an away game it was not through the away club repaying us for our generosity, but Virgin Media who had pledged to give us a little more than the one game a season that they subsidised for the other clubs.
Sadly as I said above it all backfired and we lost out more than other clubs, but it shows how firing off on social media without checking the full facts can have negative effects and turn things sour.
We should be going to Spurs with optimism and enthusiasm that we can have a good cup run and perhaps even get to Wembley, we should be riding a wave of enthusiasm going up to North London after a great run of results has taken us into the top 10 of the Premier League.
We should be talking up our team and proud of it, not talking about not going due to this fact as on one online poll 55% were saying they would do, back in 1976 Bradford almost trebled their prices for their Quarter Final game with us and back then there was one ticketing price for all games, no discounting.
But that isn't the case all the focus is on the fact that Spurs are charging us more than we charged them and that is not only wrong but a little sad I take it that all those that are boycotting because they are being asked to pay £25 will also boycott Wembley if we get to the final as you will be lucky to get a programme their for £25.