Away Tickets & Travel

Over the past couple of weeks their has been a lot of talk about the cost of away games and the fact some people beleive us and other clubs with large support are being ripped off with the cost of tickets.

The main talking point is the fact that Kettering have 3 price categories and the price for the same bit of terrace seat is either £16, £14 or £9 maybe part of the problem is that our prices are maybe cheaper than what they should be. With us having back to back promotions we haven’t adjusted the ticket prices as much as maybe we should of.

If you put aside facilities at a ground you would expect seats to be £2 more than terrace places but what is a fair price for terrace? I usually think that an afternoon at football I will be in the ground for around 2 hours and if you think the current minimum wage is around £6.50 an hour does this make £13 a fair price?

Questions have also been asked about our away support this season and how many will we take to away game this season. One thing that has always been made about us is that we don’t travel north of the river, although it’s not clear if they mean the Wandle or the Thames?

In the past 7 years the vast majority of games have been in about a 2 hour radius of Wimbledon that means for most people it meant that football was just a case of giving up an afternoon to get to and from the game and watch it. With any games that fell outside this area were more of a rarity and therefore people would make a special effort to get to these games.

This season the majority of games are more than 2 hours away and all of a sudden it’s taking up the whole day, you might be thinking well thats what football is about, but for a large majority of fans that have families or other commitments to give up every weekend might be a bit to much and therefore people will pick and choose their games.

Add in the cost element and in the current environment if people are trying to reduce outgoings one of the first things that will go is away trips if their are two people going an away day is going to set you back over £50 without even trying. Yes we did take a very decent number of people to the game at Eastbourne but I believe it was for a number of reasons, these included First Away game, Seaside trip even midweek people went down for a few extra hours, admission was reasonably priced, knowing they wouldn’t be going to the next few away games.

It will be interesting to see what our average number of people we take away compared to previous season, I think we will be round about the 500 mark, this will seem a lot less than previous years, but for some games we will take a serious lot of people, Next weekend we visit Altrincham and I think if we get 4-500 there that will be a very good turnout.