Memberships (2025/26)

[Earp]

A mate has asked the club how many tickets are allocated in the ballot and how many members there are. The club have responded by claiming that this information isn’t available due to commercial sensitivity. 
 

So the club are still encouraging new members and yet won’t disclose the existing membership, presumably as it’s a shit load which would discourage potential new members and cause existing members to rap their membership in.

 

Is it legal to refuse to disclose this sort of information? 

[SteV]

2 minutes ago, Earp said:

 

Is it legal to refuse to disclose this sort of information

Legal - yes

 

Moral - probably not

[gbandit]

No idea what the Freedom of Information requirements are for private companies, @El Prontonise will know 

[JT24]

3 minutes ago, Earp said:

A mate has asked the club how many tickets are allocated in the ballot and how many members there are. The club have responded by claiming that this information isn’t available due to commercial sensitivity. 
 

So the club are still encouraging new members and yet won’t disclose the existing membership, presumably as it’s a shit load which would discourage potential new members and cause existing members to rap their membership in.

 

Is it legal to refuse to disclose this sort of information? 

Put in a FOIA request and find out.

[SteV]

2 minutes ago, gbandit said:

No idea what the Freedom of Information requirements are for private companies, @El Prontonise will know 

Virtually none existent.

[Doctor Zaius]

Clearly plenty of tourists/one off attenders there last night by the looks of it. 

 

Bit of a pisstake to those shelling out for a membership. 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

9 minutes ago, JT24 said:

Put in a FOIA request and find out.

I don’t think companies have to disclose all private commercial info for FOI, but I could be wrong.  

[AyeDubbleYoo]

If you can’t dedicate hours to general sale, I would guess membership gets you access to 2-3 games a season. Maybe a couple more if we get League Cup home ties. 
 

The ballot failure rate in our polls is over 90%. 
 

The way to make membership ‘worth it’ is to hammer general sale and get other people who know you to assign tickets to you if they get lucky. If you just rely on ballot wins and one queue position it’s pretty poor. 

 

 

Edited September 19, 2025 by AyeDubbleYoo

[El Prontonise]

2 minutes ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

I don’t think companies have to disclose all private commercial info for FOI, but I could be wrong.  

 

They don't.

[bobbydazzla]

3 hours ago, Earp said:

A mate has asked the club how many tickets are allocated in the ballot and how many members there are. The club have responded by claiming that this information isn’t available due to commercial sensitivity. 
 

So the club are still encouraging new members and yet won’t disclose the existing membership, presumably as it’s a shit load which would discourage potential new members and cause existing members to rap their membership in.

 

Is it legal to refuse to disclose this sort of information? 

 

 

In the world of football where the vast majority of your financial income and outgoings are openly revealed, to claim that revealing how many members you have paying £40 per membership, is commercially sensitive, is just ludicrous.
 

There's fuck all commercial sensitivity in the grand scheme of things.

 

They just don't want us to know because:

 

1) It'll be demoralising for match going fans to know the number of memberships they're competing with

2) And this is the main one I think. We can take an informed guess at how many might be touts given that the vast majority of match going Newcastle fans will be living in or around a city of only 300,000 people 

 

So for example, if they were to reveal that there's 200,000 members, then we know that there's an absolute fuckload of touts because our match going support outside of the region isn’t very significant 

 

 

 

Edited September 19, 2025 by bobbydazzla

[LFEE]

The only time the club has come close to disclosing membership numbers was some comment I believe Silverstone made regarding Dortmund a couple of seasons back. Can’t exactly remember the exact specifics but it alluded to around 90k.

[Interpolic]

9 hours ago, patrone said:

But people were saying it's the club and they are selling these tickets at a massive mark up 

 

🤔

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/articles/cwy9dlqxx2ro

 

There's a table in that article indicating you can get tickets at Arsenal for £49. Absolutely ridiculous that our cheapest is now £55 when we're in the NE. 

 

No explanation, no justification. Standard NUFC ticketing. 

 

 

Edited September 19, 2025 by Interpolic

[pedro111]

4 hours ago, bobbydazzla said:

 

 

In the world of football where the vast majority of your financial income and outgoings are openly revealed, to claim that revealing how many members you have paying £40 per membership, is commercially sensitive, is just ludicrous.
 

There's fuck all commercial sensitivity in the grand scheme of things.

 

They just don't want us to know because:

 

1) It'll be demoralising for match going fans to know the number of memberships they're competing with

2) And this is the main one I think. We can take an informed guess at how many might be touts given that the vast majority of match going Newcastle fans will be living in or around a city of only 300,000 people 

 

So for example, if they were to reveal that there's 200,000 members, then we know that there's an absolute fuckload of touts because our match going support outside of the region isn’t very significant 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyneside alone is nearly 900k I think.

[bobbydazzla]

10 hours ago, pedro111 said:

 

 

Tyneside alone is nearly 900k I think.

it was just to illustrate the point that we have a small population even in our most densely populated catchment area and we have a very localised support base

 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2025 by bobbydazzla

[Whitley mag]

On 17/09/2025 at 13:28, Earp said:

Those were the days - queuing overnight for Blackburn away in the cup.

Aye separated the real fans from the fair weather ones. Still remember them opening the gates in the early hours and being in a swaying scrum of pissed up lunatics outside the old ticket office.

[bobbydazzla]

Unlimited, unvetted memberships really is at the heart of our touting problems like.

 

Combine that with the tech that’s available and you can see why a normal punter has very little chance of a ticket unless they get lucky in the ballot.  
 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2025 by bobbydazzla

[bobbydazzla]

1 hour ago, Whitley mag said:

Aye separated the real fans from the fair weather ones. Still remember them opening the gates in the early hours and being in a swaying scrum of pissed up lunatics outside the old ticket office.

Pressing F5 for days on end and engineering a decent queue position at 10am on a Monday are the new versions of spending the night outside the ground 

 

How times have changed 

[LordJake]

27 minutes ago, bobbydazzla said:

Unlimited, unvetted memberships really is at the heart of our touting problems like.

 

Combine that with the tech that’s available and you can see why a normal punter has very little chance of a ticket unless they get lucky in the ballot.  
 

 

 

 

 

Absolutely, a couple of years ago and our first foray into the ECL for a while, I managed 8 ballot tickets for all competitions.

I thought that was reasonable for my membership fee. Last season I got one, Wimbledon in the cup. So far nothing this season.

Re-sale is no good for me unless I’m off on a Tuesday (seldom) as I work in an operating theatre and can hardly fuck off and F5 for a couple of hours 

[bobbydazzla]

31 minutes ago, LordJake said:

Absolutely, a couple of years ago and our first foray into the ECL for a while, I managed 8 ballot tickets for all competitions.

I thought that was reasonable for my membership fee. Last season I got one, Wimbledon in the cup. So far nothing this season.

Re-sale is no good for me unless I’m off on a Tuesday (seldom) as I work in an operating theatre and can hardly fuck off and F5 for a couple of hours 

Even for those of us who can get online at 10am and have never previously struggled to get a ticket that way, the Barca and Arsenal games this season have been a completely different kettle of fish with thousands of tickets getting hoovered up in a few minutes by the memberships who have the first few hundred queue places 

 

It can’t be genuine members because the maths just don’t add up

 

Never seen anything like it before  

 

 

Edited September 20, 2025 by bobbydazzla

[Wallsendmag]

2 hours ago, Whitley mag said:

Aye separated the real fans from the fair weather ones. Still remember them opening the gates in the early hours and being in a swaying scrum of pissed up lunatics outside the old ticket office.

 

Aye I was in amongst that. We got in the queue around 7pm and it had already gone from the old gates at the Milburn Stand, around the Gallowgate and it was just snaking up the East Stand. Remember the ticket office staff being called in around 4/5am and the charge up the hill when they opened those gates. People being trodden on as they lost their footing in the stampede. Then a massive chant of "The Fulwell End is always full!"

 

Think I got back in the house about 7 or 8am and my mam and dad let me have the moring off school so I could get some sleep.

 

I loved that season!

[OptimusSlime]

16 hours ago, bobbydazzla said:

 

 

In the world of football where the vast majority of your financial income and outgoings are openly revealed, to claim that revealing how many members you have paying £40 per membership, is commercially sensitive, is just ludicrous.
 

There's fuck all commercial sensitivity in the grand scheme of things.

 

They just don't want us to know because:

 

1) It'll be demoralising for match going fans to know the number of memberships they're competing with

2) And this is the main one I think. We can take an informed guess at how many might be touts given that the vast majority of match going Newcastle fans will be living in or around a city of only 300,000 people 

 

So for example, if they were to reveal that there's 200,000 members, then we know that there's an absolute fuckload of touts because our match going support outside of the region isn’t very significant 

 

 

 

 

agree overall and appreciate Newcastle council area is only 300k, but Im not having that Wallsend isn’t Newcastle just because they invented the county of North Tyneside in 1974.

 

The areas of Northumberland, North Tyneside, Gateshead, a fair chunk of South Tyneside and significant parts of County Durham are black and white.  This puts the regional catchment area well over a million.

[Dr.Spaceman]

One central system across the PL for ticketing using facial ID linked to your home address is the way forward. Should weed out some of the grumpy boomers as well.

[patrone]

Membership was limited and only available for a short time each season under Ashley 

 

Another thing he got right it would appear 🤔

[SteV]

5 minutes ago, patrone said:

Membership was limited and only available for a short time each season under Ashley 

 

Another thing he got right it would appear 🤔

But ironically didn’t make any difference as 9 times out of 10 it was easy enough to get a ticket regardless.

[patrone]

Just now, SteV said:

But ironically didn’t make any difference as 9 times out of 10 it was easy enough to get a ticket regardless.

Yeh, no fkr wanted them or needed them at the time 

 

🤣