Various Southampton FC social media sites have seen some of those who travelled to Charlton on Saturday, question why there was once again a block of empty seats at an away game that is supposedly sold out.
I have been buying tickets for away games online for well over a decade, but this season I have seen a trend both in the ticket availability online and also in the ground that is rather worrying.
Over the years when I have logged on at the opening time of a sale day for an away game, I have found it easy to select seats in a prime position, but this season there is something different happening in the sales pattern.
This was the case for the game at Charlton when I logged on there was a large section of seats unavailable for sale, perhaps you might say that there is high demand and the tickets have gone quickly and that might hold water, however it was strange that in other areas of high demand, there were still some scattered seats available in those blocks.
This was the same for the Millwall game, minutes after they had gone on sale there were some big sections of the upper level at the New Den seemingly completely sold out, these were at the side of the stand, so not in prime positions, so I would doubt that someone would have opted to buy a seat in the back row top corner when there were better tickets available.
One answer could be that they had not put these blocks on sale straight away, but you could buy tickets in the lower tier, the worst place to be, these weren't held back, so why would you hold any in the upper tier in reserve.
Rumours abound that the club is holding back a disproportionate number of tickets for it's sponsors and also staff members.
This has always been the case and in fairness I don't have a real problem with staff members getting tickets, many are from the City and support the team, but it seems that a lot more tickets are going to sponsors these days.
From my experience of logging on right at the start of the sale, when there should be plenty of tickets available, these days there is always somewhere between 3-500 tickets that are seemingly completely sold out only minutes after the tickets have gone on line.
Yes there is high demand these days, but this is a selling pattern that wasn't there in the previous few seasons when demand has been just as high.
So when I read on social media stories of a whole block of around 150 seats being empty in the away end at Charlton on Saturday, it raises my eyebrows.
Earlier in the season at Hull, another game sold out, with 5 minutes to go before kick off there was an empty section of around 150 seats with not a soul in them, with the curved location of the away section up there, they were easy to see.
As the game kicked off some nearby moved in as there was more room so they could stand with their mates, but they clearly were there because of that and not because they had tickets in that section.
Away tickets are hard to come by these days, for the more popular games you have to have a lot of purchase credits on your account to be eligible and it makes it very hard to build up those credits with so many games selling out quickly.
So it is galling for those loyal fans who would have liked to go to Charlton to hear that there were empty seats.
I appreciate that the club has to keep it's sponsors happy, but it seems from what I have seen this season that the number of tickets now distributed to the sponsors has increased and more worryingly that it seems that a large number of those tickets are not being used.
When there is a block of 150 seats completely empty as was the case at Hull it says to me that a big sponsor has taken an allocation and then not bothered to give them out, you would expect at least someone to go, even if it was 20 or 30.
So I would ask the club to say what is happening here, how do they decide how many tickets are available to the sponsors and what is the criteria ?
At the moment it would seem that the club is giving a large number out to sponsors, it is bad enough in an allocation of 3,000 to see so many seats being given away, but if we look at the final away games of the season when we could be pushing for promotion, it could be critical.
Wrexham away in April is going to see one of the lowest allocations of the season, around 1,500 tickets, will the club give away a third of that allocation, the Welsh club is popular with those that like a bit of Hollywood and they are in a high point of their history because of it, are we going to see the CEO of P & O Cruises demand 100 tickets because his daughter wants to take all her mates to see Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
I would be surprised if the club did comment on this, whatever they say is going to upset the supporters, most fans would think that away tickets should be for the loyal fans that turn out week in week out and that sponsors etc should only get tickets if there are any spare.
But that is not reality, if a company is pumping big money into a club the size of Southampton FC they expect some privileges and that includes access to tickets for away games as well as home fixtures.