Saints are introducing a scheme next season where season ticket holders may be able to sell back their seat to the club for individual games but how will it work ?
Ticketing agencies like StubHub have been working with several Premier league clubs over recent years to operate ticket resale schemes, however there are many who claim that these schemes are little more than club sanctioned touting, Spurs fans especially feel aggrieved that for many Spurs home games tickets appear on the "official" StubHub for £200, the club's response being that this is the agreed ceiling for the resale of tickets.
So how will Saints scheme operate ? Will it be run by the club or will it be operated by a third party such as StubHub.
First indications are that this could be a club run scheme, the initial details say.
The ticket resale scheme will only come into operation once a game has been declared as sold out
Upon the Club opening the scheme, you will be able to offer your seat for re-sale using the online ticketing system
No guarantee can be given that your seat will be sold
If your seat is sold, a credit will be applied to your account which can be redeemed against the cost of your 2016/17 Season Ticket
Full details on pricing will be released in the summer
This seems to indicate that this is going to be administered by the Club and if that is so it will provide a valuable service to season ticket holders who cannot attend a game and would therefore in the past have had to have paid for a game they could not attend and secondly a seat would have gone spare. The fact that Saints will apply season ticket credits rather than paying a season ticket holder lends to the fact this is not a third party scheme.
There will of course be a cost to doing so, but as long as the season ticket holder is reasonably compensated with the credits given I see that as not a problem, for instance if a £42 ticket was credited with £35 towards the following years ticket that is a reasonable amount, £30 to £35 maybe less so, under £30 could be seen as profiteering.
Overall though a Club run scheme has to be good and the electronic ticketing system means that it is a fairly simple task for the club to run in that they can cancel a season ticket card for an individual game and issue a single match ticket.
Hopefully this will encourage supporters who would normally miss a game or two and might not purchase a season ticket because of that to do so now.
StubHub and third party schemes however have come under increasing fire and I do hope that this is not being run by one of those schemes, supporters of those clubs like Spurs claim that whilst it is illegal to sell a ticket over the face value, by allowing a ticket to be resold at way over cost the club is condoning ticket touting.
I hope that Saints will merely re sell tickets to supporters on the data base for the face value with perhaps a small administration fee, I have no problem with the club making a little money out of it to cover costs.