Saints have announced a few changes for buying tickets.
The first change is positive, Saints supporters will now be able to buy tickets for home games in the West Quay megastore commencing from the first week in January and starting with the home game against Huddersfield.
This is of course a positive move as it means supporters dont have to go to the stadium to purchase tickets but can get them whilst shopping in town, this could obviously encourage more sales as well as easing matchday congestion.
With regard to matchday sales, Saints, in line with many other clubs in this division are now adding £2 to the ticket price for purchases on the day of the game, this has been done to encourage fans to buy in advance, rather than turn up in the hour before kick off etc.
Im not so sure about this practice myself, whilst i can see the point and an extra £2 isnt great, its still penalising supporters for making a late decision to go to the game, for a family of four its an extra £8, hardly an incentive to walk up on the day.
My thoughts are that Saints could have taken other measures to ease congestion on the day, perhaps utilising the empty seats in the Itchen/Chapel corner and selling tickets on the turnstile, cash and adult tickets only to make it easier to account for.
Also perhaps they might consider selling tickets only for this area after a certain time before kick off, several times this season, my view of the game has been disrupted due to late comers who have wanted a centre seat and then spend half their time standing in the aisle looking for it, Im not alone in this, if they only sold Itchen corner then this would be erradicated with all the empty seats.
These measures would do a lot more to easing matchday congestion than adding £2.