Moving away fans to Upper West Corner

[Dirk Gently]

Agree there are cheaper alternatives but not if you're elderly or disabled.

Yep. Please tell me they don't charge full price for disabled parking. That'll really tip me over the edge...

Relax, they don't.

There are permits issued for the season, and disabled supporters attending on a match by match basis can get parking for £5.

Additionally, club partners with Readibus so disabled supporters can be brought door-to-door.

https://www.readingfc.co.uk/fans/disabled-supporters

Good stuff! That's the *real* Reading FC. This "let's make the away supporters pay over the odds" is just so out of character for them.

[Greatwesternline]

They will have to carry out construction work to the stadium presumably to enable this change. They will need more stewarding to prevent away fans throwing things from the upper tier to the tier below.

The stadium was designed to hold away fans in a bar concourse separate to other fans. How will this all work now?

Now much more money will they actually make?

How much will they lose in lost home UW season ticket holders who dont want to pay more to be sat nearer noisy rude away fans.

I doubt the money they are making on this after all the above will move the dial much.

Easier ways to make money include making the mad stad a bit more of an all day attraction pre and post game, like it was becoming with blue collar food. Create an atmosphere of convivial street food and yuppy beers from 11am onwards and post match. I suspect you could extract as much additional profit out of this as you could selling 500 odd tickets for an extra tenner, but incurring considerable extra security costs.

[Snowflake Royal]

I doubt they'll need more stewards than are already required for away fans.

There's oodles of room in the upper west, so no real lost revenue from people there.

Not hard to put in a barrier wall between gates in the UW.

[Royal_jimmy]

Rival fans on Twitter having a meltdown lol. Port Vale fan calling for us to be charged through the nose when we go there. Others saying they'll boycott our ground. Not realising that we're just doing to clubs what they do to us.

[tidus_mi2]

Rival fans on Twitter having a meltdown lol. Port Vale fan calling for us to be charged through the nose when we go there. Others saying they'll boycott our ground. Not realising that we're just doing to clubs what they do to us.

Also echoes of our fans in the past saying we should charge Leeds/Sheffield Wednesday through the nose in return not realising that clubs can't charge away fans more than home fans so it's largely a moot point.

[Orion1871]

Rival fans on Twitter having a meltdown lol. Port Vale fan calling for us to be charged through the nose when we go there. Others saying they'll boycott our ground. Not realising that we're just doing to clubs what they do to us.

If they don't like it then don't pay it. Not like we're happy to be hosting them anyway.

[Royal_jimmy]

Rival fans on Twitter having a meltdown lol. Port Vale fan calling for us to be charged through the nose when we go there. Others saying they'll boycott our ground. Not realising that we're just doing to clubs what they do to us.

If they don't like it then don't pay it. Not like we're happy to be hosting them anyway.

Exactly. Moaning on social media just isn't a great look

[SCIAG]

Hot take that will probably piss every single person off:

When matches are played behind closed doors, the biggest difference is that away players are awarded fewer yellow cards. https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/eco ... 202014.pdf

Therefore, moving away fans in order to increase home advantage is immoral. The main result is not home players putting in more effort, it is referees giving away players cautions that they would not otherwise receive.

I have more sympathy for short-sighted profiteering than for trying to get opposition players booked.

[Clyde1998]

Hot take that will probably piss every single person off:

When matches are played behind closed doors, the biggest difference is that away players are awarded fewer yellow cards. https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/eco ... 202014.pdf

Therefore, moving away fans in order to increase home advantage is immoral. The main result is not home players putting in more effort, it is referees giving away players cautions that they would not otherwise receive.

I have more sympathy for short-sighted profiteering than for trying to get opposition players booked.

It's still only a third of a yellow card per game less - so even though that's the only very highly significant (statistically; p<0.001) difference, it's still doesn't make a huge impact on individual matches. That said, there was still a significant (p<0.01) reduction in home wins with games being played behind closed doors (a ten percentage point reduction) - something which will have a huge difference over a season. Of course, we're talking about a different location of away fans as opposed to playing games without any fans in the stadium.

One factor that does make an impact is stadium occupancy (how full the stadium is) - https://members.believeperform.com/crow ... advantage/. If the club are selling more tickets to home fans in areas people want to sit (and selling more tickets in areas with cheaper tickets), it could make an impact on the level of home advantage by making the stadium more full with home fans than it otherwise would've been (although I can't see that factor making much of an impact on us next season - as there won't be a huge amount of games where any specific area is going to be completely sold out).

[YoungRon]

Hot take that will probably piss every single person off:

When matches are played behind closed doors, the biggest difference is that away players are awarded fewer yellow cards. https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/eco ... 202014.pdf

Therefore, moving away fans in order to increase home advantage is immoral. The main result is not home players putting in more effort, it is referees giving away players cautions that they would not otherwise receive.

I have more sympathy for short-sighted profiteering than for trying to get opposition players booked.

I've never noticed the home team getting more yellow cards. But I have noticed that more yellow cards are given to teams with the motivation to win in the case of some important match. They just often overdo it

[Royal_jimmy]

Can't wait to see 200-300 fans in the upper west from teams like Burton, Fleetwood and Carlisle

[paultheroyal]

Can't wait to see 200-300 fans in the upper west from teams like Burton, Fleetwood and Carlisle

Scenarios like that and a few more is why this makes absolutely perfect sense.

[Elm Park Kid]

Should have just shutdown the South Stand for the season. Make it look less embarrassing when 9k fans are in a 23k stadium.

[Snowflake Royal]

Seems a bit much for something that will only happen a couple of times a season.

[Royal_jimmy]

We've sold more season tickets than last year so I expect we'll see similar crowds to the season just gone

[RG30]

That went well last night

[Hendo]

Yeah, that was absolute scummy behaviour from 1 small group of fans.

Was probably always on the cards of happening at some point, but seriously, what goes through the minds of these people?

[Silver Fox]

Where were the stewards?

At any point at all???

[tidus_mi2]

Yeah, that was absolute scummy behaviour from 1 small group of fans.

Was probably always on the cards of happening at some point, but seriously, what goes through the minds of these people?

Absolutely moronic, potential life ban, why would you even risk that? Some football supporters lack braincells.

[Green]

What happened?