Dundee United’s managing director Mal Brannigan said the club is introducing a new ticketing system for the 2019-20 season after fans were left outraged as a result of the play-off final ticket debacle.
Hundreds of fans of the Scottish Championship side were unable to secure passes for the club’s most important match in years due to flaws in the ticketing process.
Brannigan apologised after some season ticket holders made off with as many as 20 tickets in one sale, despite the club’s policy being one per person. The new ticket system would include a cap on the number of tickets sold per person, he said.
The match against Premiership club St. Mirren, which could see Dundee United promoted or the Paisley outfit relegated, has seen the lowest away allocation ever set aside for the club in a play-off fixture.
Dundee United secured 1,500 seats at the Simple Digital Arena, leading Brannigan to claim the “tight allocation” was inevitable after St. Mirren saw who their opponents would be.
In a statement, Brannigan said: “The club believed that the system of one ticket per season ticket voucher was the fairest way of distributing these, but this has received some criticism, given that some of the purchases were in excess of twenty tickets by some customers.
“Suggestions that some supporters bought several hundred are unfounded as are claims that tickets were sold to non-season ticket holders.”
He said a new ticketing system would be brought in at the start of the 2019-20 season.
St. Mirren is set to travel to 14,200-seat Tannadice Park today (Thursday) for the first leg of the play-off, at which it has a 1,200-seat allocation, before Dundee United make their way to Paisley for the second leg on Sunday.
Brannigan continued: “One of the first areas that we identified when we came into the club was the need for a new ticketing system that could help us interact and engage with our fans better.
“The ticketing system being introduced ahead of next season will help alleviate some of the issues from this morning. In particular, it will include the ability to record those fans that travel to the away games as well as being season ticket holders at Tannadice.
“I take responsibility for the situation this morning, and it has been a learning curve. While there is not one solution that will work in today’s scenario, we will look now at all the suggestions that have been forwarded by fans since this morning, including the capping of tickets per person regardless of the number of vouchers they have.
“I apologise to the number of very loyal and passionate fans who missed out this morning after queuing through the night.”
Image: Ljkitson.
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