- Following some ticket returns and a sweep of the restricted seats as the TV gantries are in place, a small number of home tickets for tomorrow's game are now being placed on sale.
- Tickets are limited, so we are asking for supporters to email in their name, contact number and season ticket card if applicable to tickets@tranmererovers.co.uk with their ticket requests by 10pm tonight (03/01/2019).
- We will give priority to those season ticket holders who do not already have a ticket. After this we will randomly draw the remaining tickets.
- We will reply to emails on Friday 4th January. As we anticipate there will be a large volume of emails, we will only reply to those who are successful. If we have not replied to you by 10am then unfortunately you will not have been successful in obtaining a ticket for the FA Cup tie against Spurs.
Prenton Park capacity statement
With tickets for Friday’s big game against Spurs sold out, we have been asked lots of times regarding the maximum seating capacity of the stadium.
The answer is not as simple as you might think, as it varies from match to match depending on whether it is reserved or unreserved seating and what the television requirements are.
We currently have 15,573 seats in the stadium. This is less than the original capacity, but the front rows of each stand were permanently removed to assist in prevent pitch encroachment and some others were lost when the disabled seating platform was put into the Kop Stand.
However, we never make all of the 15,573 available for sale, because around 500 seats have significantly restricted views: primarily those behind the disabled shelters in front of the Bebington Paddock. These will therefore not be sold for the Spurs game.
We then have to work out which seats will have their views significantly impeded by the TV gantries required for the game. For the Spurs match, we have 16 TV camera points set up around the ground, so that takes out another few hundred seats.
Finally, because we have chosen to go unrestricted seating in everywhere but the main stand, we are only permitted to sell 90% of the maximum net capacity, for safety reasons.
That begs the question of why go unrestricted seating. This is something about which we had lengthy debates. Prenton Park is not a venue which routinely sells out and therefore, unlike the Premier League clubs, fans are used to being able to turn up and sit wherever they want, unless it is a seat reserved for a season ticket holder.
Given that the attendance on Friday will be more than double the normal, that means we will have a lot of fans there who are not regular attenders. To direct each of them to a specific seat in an unfamiliar ground would require a much higher level of stewarding and policing than an unrestricted seating policy would allow and therefore the income from selling the additional seats would largely be offset by the costs (particularly when you take into account that the gate is split with the visiting team in any event, so we would only benefit from 50% of the additional revenue).
In addition, many season ticket holders will bring additional friends and family to a big game like this – an unrestricted seating policy allows greater flexibility for groups to sit together if they wish. The most important factor in all the decision making was ensuring the ticketing priority scheme allowed our regular supporters the opportunity to purchase a ticket for themselves before we went to general sale.
The Main Stand has to be sold on an allocated seating basis because access to bars and lounges is strictly defined by the seating area in which supporters sit, but in any event as The Main Stand is always allocated seating it causes less of a logistical problem for stewards.
After the Spurs game we will have a full debrief to see how it has all worked and we will discuss with TROSC and the Trust whether we believe that is the best approach for the future big sell-out gates that we all hope to see at Prenton Park.
So, taking all of the above into account, the maximum capacity for the Spurs game will be approximately 13,300.
Following some ticket returns and a sweep of the restricted seats now as the TV gantries are in place, we do have a small number of tickets which we can release for sale. As there are a very limited number, we are asking supporters to email in with your name, contact number and season card number if applicable to tickets@tranmererovers.co.uk with your requests by 10pm tonight (03/01/2019). We will give priority to these requests to season ticket holders who do not already have a ticket. After that we will randomly draw the remaining tickets.
We will reply to supporter emails in the morning (04/01/2019). As we anticipate there will be a large volume of emails, we will only be able to reply if you are successful. If we have not replied by 10am then unfortunately you will not have been successful in getting a ticket.