Matchday pricing – our plans
You will probably have seen the pricing for matchday tickets for Fulham’s first home game of the new season against Liverpool on 6 August, which was published late last week. The Trust’s reaction to it, and a link to an Athletic article on the subject, is here.
Despite the Memorandum of Understanding we have with Fulham FC, and the new rules that the Premier League is putting in place on supporter engagement, the pricing of match by match tickets wasn’t discussed with the Trust before they were announced. We had asked about this a number of times since promotion was guaranteed.
To say we are disappointed about this is an understatement, and while it is always going to be for the Club to decide on ticket pricing, failing to either provide contextual information (such as matchday ticket pricing for other fixtures) or seek feedback from supporters risks exactly the type of adverse reaction you may have seen in the last few days. Particularly given the amount of detailed work the Trust has done on ticketing in the past, it is a shame lessons appear not to have been learnt.
While we would normally hold a monthly meeting with Fulham on a range of issues, we have asked for, and the Club have agreed to, a meeting on Thursday of this week solely on the issue of matchday ticketing and pricing. From what a number of you have told us over the weekend, we hope you will understand why that is the case. Other issues you might have raised will be carried over, except for those relating to facilities within Craven Cottage. Last week, some of our board members joined the Club in a walk-around of the ground to highlight the points about the matchday experience you have raised with us, and a separate note of that will be circulated to Trust members shortly.
Later this week, we will launch a more detailed survey on ticketing and pricing for Trust members and the wider fanbase; please do look out for that and encourage friends and family who might not currently be Trust members to also complete it. This will enable us to do some more detailed analysis of views and, perhaps more importantly, present some options for the Club to consider ahead of other high profile fixtures going on sale. We will aim to provide the detailed results both to the Club and Trust members ahead of our August meeting with the Club so that it can be considered in more detail then.
As ever, we will seek to use the constructive dialogue we have usually had with the Club in recent years to both present supporter views, seek information and propose alternative suggestions. In the past, the Club have listened; we hope they will again. If not, it may be that this is an issue you, our members, will want us to campaign on. For that reason too, it is important that you are able to complete the forthcoming survey and also provide your views, any impact on ticket buying and other information to us. You can do that by emailing us at contact@fulhamsupporterstrust.com.
If you know of Fulham fans who are not currently members of the Trust, please encourage them to join us. Our membership has been steadily growing but the more of us there are, the stronger our voice is.
