Sold Out

[Alexander Litvinenko]

Surely when only singles are left demand would increase significantly?

Demand is unchanged - but the number of people who are prepared to buy a single seat is much lower than those looking for 2 or more together.

What I mean is - people who wouldn't have otherwise considered sitting alone now will as there's no other option.

For some, yes. For many others they just won't go if they have to sit alone.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Told Boyd Butler yeras ago that they should make the system not allow the single seats to remain, no one listened, you can choose seats allowing a gap, but common sense says do not do this!!

[tink]

Must admit that I was a little surprised at how easy it was to buy tickets for the Everton game on the Wednesday before the game - I had a cousin over from Holland and I was going to let her use my season ticket, but then i noticed there was a whole block of about 30 seats released in the South Stand. Granted, it meant I had to sit in the South Stand, but at least we were able to sit together.

I wonder whether the club sold my regular ST seat, or whether it was one of the many empty seats that were on display...

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Even if a season tickey holder doesn't go, the seat is counted as attending. Thats why the attendances are so high even though you can see loads of empty seats.

That's always been the case, I believe.

In the days of cash admission they had to assume that season ticket holders would turn up, and couldn't therefore sell more tickets than the remaining capacity. As a result, season ticket holders would get counted in the count, even if they didn't turn up.

Now they just normal tickets sold too.

I remember one club in the championship, Burnley I think, used to publish both the sold and actual attendance figures. Even there you get nearly 1000 people not bothering to show up for some games.

The worst one was probably that friendly v Spurs, where we'd given about 4000 tickets to schools, and the kids didn't bother coming along. We had to shut the gates, locking people out, even though there were thousands of empty seats.

[Alexander Litvinenko]

I think before 2006 we used to be given the option to report how we liked out of "tickets sold" or "people through the gate" - which is the norm for Football League Clubs, as there's no defined standard.

But when we got to the Premier League in 2006, we were obliged to follow the PL "standard practice" of "attendance = tickets sold." All Pl clubs report that way.

Personally I think it's part of the PL's aim to perpetuate the "best league in the world" claptrap - for the PL's public image-makers, the lower the attendance the less credibility that message has.