I used to have a soft spot for Orient as my Grandad supported them before the 2nd World War. Uncle Adolf decided to bomb London and I ended being born in Chelsfield.
I have a lot to thank Uncle Adolf for despite his faults.
But on a serious note fuck Orient I hope we smash the pricks.
Yep, we can start on the pricks and work our way upwards...
I used to have a soft spot for Orient as my Grandad supported them before the 2nd World War. Uncle Adolf decided to bomb London and I ended being born in Chelsfield.
I have a lot to thank Uncle Adolf for despite his faults.
But on a serious note fuck Orient I hope we smash the pricks.
I had to read that a second time before I realised your grandfather was not Adolf!
I used to have a soft spot for Orient as my Grandad supported them before the 2nd World War. Uncle Adolf decided to bomb London and I ended being born in Chelsfield.
I have a lot to thank Uncle Adolf for despite his faults.
But on a serious note fuck Orient I hope we smash the pricks.
I had to read that a second time before I realised your grandfather was not Adolf!
If we ever do make it to the championship and find ourselves in this situation again, we will likely be playing a bigger club who will easily sell out their allocation. Worth remembering that.
There would be no thousands of extras if we were playing the likes of West Brom, Norwich, Ipswich etc.
Sunderland are bigger than all of those clubs and we got part of their allocation last time.
I would say Sunderland are a similar sized club to those, but either way, it's not the point. We also didn't get much of their allocation and we have sold the same amount this time more or less.
Bigger clubs will sell the vast majority of their allocation in events like this, that's how it goes. If this happens again in the future with a play-off final (hopefully) we can't be requesting more tickets than what we got here. We won't be entitled to them.
All the high horse stuff with demanding tickets and getting on the back of another club about their tickets sales is ridiculous.
Our average attendance has been under 60% for a whole season. We have no right to be calling out another club for their ticket sales and how tickets should be made available etc imo.
Seeing as Orients general sale window ends at 5pm on Friday, I reckon we will be given a further block by block allocation after then.
Anything before that time then whoever makes that decision is opening themselves up for criticism for ‘moving the goalposts’. Could you imagine if roles were reversed and some of our fans planned to buy on Friday only for the allocation to be reduced and they missed out.
Why would anyone put off buying a ticket ? How does that thought process work? I fancy going to this match but will wait til Friday to purchase my tickets ? I have often wondered why joint Valley Gold / ST got so long to decide if they want to go to a game which is on restricted sale. Sure, prioritise them but don't give them 4 or 5 days and make the process for non joint VG/ST ie all the other genuine fans who want to go panic about buying....
It does not make sense, if sales are slowing then the sooner we get the allocation the less stressful for everyone, particularly as the guy who alluded to the admin required... Madness. But then we are only football fans....
The biggest thing that does not make sense is fans that qualified for certain sales windows could buy for themselves plus 3 other ‘randoms’ that fancy a day out.
Our average gate last season was 15k. That means the Wembley allocation that’s been sold out basically consists of 22k ‘randoms’, some of whom will have got along to a lot of home and/or away games, but not that many.
By ‘randoms’ I meant people without a cafc purchase history. I have a purchase history from being a (lapsed) season ticket holder and was lucky enough to get a ticket when that window opened. Some people I know with similar circumstances weren’t as lucky. I just think being able to get 3 additional tickets for people without history is not fair when others with more Charlton connection miss out.
My frustration is that I have probably been to enough games over the past 2 seasons to have the loyalty points to have bought in the earlier batch, but given the ease of getting tickets previoulsy I have often bought on the gate when making a last minute decision on an evening game, or had tickets bought by who I occasionally go with and not linked the accounts. Therefore I have a lot of "missing" loyalty points because I bought without my fan ID.
If I miss out today and more tickets dont become available I will be very frustrated and may change my view, but I also feel that fans with the huge loyalty point totals and fans with season tickets who go to every home game have earned the right to bring friends/family along for the big day out. I could potentially argue that it should be 2 tickets per fan ID / season ticket etc. (as this would have allowed me to get tickets by now!) but I can see the rationale to get the tickets sold as soon as possible, hopefully filling the stadium
It's a unpopular opinion, but personally I think ST/VG holders should be able to buy 4 tickets as long as everyone has a cafc ID. Nobody should be entitled to bring randoms, just because they've spent money at the club.
Family stands should be for young kids too, not 15/16/17 year olds who are probably having a pint before the match 😆
I don't agree. Plenty of semi regular attenders who don't have an account or fan ID. My wife has never had one but has been to 35 Charlton games since we've been together. Is she not allowed a ticket. Plenty of people who buy for their less computer literate older family and friends who would then miss out.
If you were to do this you'd need to make it really clear and telegraph it 2 years in advance. So that people can set up accounts and build purchase history's for those people. There should also be a reminder with every purchase of multiple tickets to assign them to the right people or risk them not being able to attend big games.
I'm just not sure we are at the point of needing to restict sales like that (yet!).
Canters, I agree somewhat but I would like to extend it to the ability to assign tickets to members regardless of what phase the ‘buyer’ got them. CatJnr dropped his ST a couple of years ago because of shift work but still does up to 20 per year split home and away and normally gets his own tix. For high profile (this year Orient and Wrexham - and playoffs!) I book his tickets as I get priority. Why shouldn’t he get those points too? Same with his gf. She doesn’t even have an account because either him or me book her tickets but she would comfortably qualify for the 150+ point phase
If you book tickets and allocate them to someone they get the points (my lot all do but then we go reguarly and read the instructions). If you don't allocate the tickets to someone how on earth are the club to know?
I can only manage to allocate if the recipients qualify for the phase I buy them in; and it's simple and quick - can you point to me to the instructions on how I can allocate if I buy in a phase they don't qualify for?
As you say, in that particular instance you cannot, because you can't allocate points/credit to someone that is not at that stage entitled to purchase.
However, the first 18 plus aways this season probably didn't have that issue and nor last season, so if you go to most of the games and register the 10 points from home games and 5 points from away games that you are ENTITLED to, then you could comfortably have racked up 600 odd points and I think we only needed 150 to enter. (Plus of course all the cup games and there are usually at least 5 per season).
I think you got the wrong end of the stick. Yes I do have 600+ but it was my son I was talking about who because of shift work can only make about 15 games split home and away and gets points when he can. He could easily have waited for the 150 phase but he wanted to stand with me (and other family members with even more points than me) so I bought in season ticket phase - which seems to be a mortal sin to some. The point I was making was that the few times I do that he’s missing out on 20/30 points
Apologies, I think I did get the wrong end of the stick. I was wrongly assuming that your son had missed out through not having enough points. I didn't realise you are in the same boat as the majority and had bought for him so you can be together. I hope you all have a great day.
NB I reckon the majority including me are missing points for similar & varied reasons.
No problem @Covered End. All I wanted was to get us in the same seats as 2019 (I got same section, same row but about 10 seats out - much better than some have managed). For several years we would match points and it was not an issue and I suppose, for personal reasons, it grates he can’t get assigned the points if I buy early. He’s a fourth generation Addick and can only really remember L1 with the occasional flirtation with Championship. A bit like me growing up with Div2/3 then Lennie.. 😀. I just don’t know why it couldn’t be like the old days when if you had a ticket stub, you could get priority for cup games? Why can I be able to assign points to a CON number regardless of who/when the ticket was bought? We will enjoy and hopefully win. Hope you do too. UTA!
If we ever do make it to the championship and find ourselves in this situation again, we will likely be playing a bigger club who will easily sell out their allocation. Worth remembering that.
There would be no thousands of extras if we were playing the likes of West Brom, Norwich, Ipswich etc.
Sunderland are bigger than all of those clubs and we got part of their allocation last time.
I would say Sunderland are a similar sized club to those, but either way, it's not the point. We also didn't get much of their allocation and we have sold the same amount this time more or less.
Bigger clubs will sell the vast majority of their allocation in events like this, that's how it goes. If this happens again in the future with a play-off final (hopefully) we can't be requesting more tickets than what we got here. We won't be entitled to them.
All the high horse stuff with demanding tickets and getting on the back of another club about their tickets sales is ridiculous.
Our average attendance has been under 60% for a whole season. We have no right to be calling out another club for their ticket sales and how tickets should be made available etc imo.
it seems infuriating to me but I freely admit to not having studied Wembley in detail so quite happy to be put bang to rights here by those that have....
So the capacity is 90k. But some of those seats are "corporate" i.e not part of the club allocation? Correct? How many? If it's as much as 10k, then I see the problem. The effective max split evenly per club is 40k each. Which would imply that we have sold our limit in our half of the stadium? And therefore any new tickets come from areas which are on Orient's side of the stadium?
Then I suppose that if one teams fans are housed on the wrong side of the half way line there needs to be some gap between the two sets of fans, as in the Jimmy Seed last week. It may well be that this is where plod gets involved. If things like this look really bizarre (like holding back the home team's fans after the match rather than the away team's, remember that?) then it's the dead hand of plod at work.
Some people are also saying that the way Wembley sell the blocks might end up making a neat segregation more difficult. If that's so that's on Wembley. How many matches worth of experience, how much data have they accumulated by now? They ought to have forecasting models by now that could have told Orient how much they will end up with based on the say, the first three days of sales. Well, they ought to...
As for the EFL, I don't see a role for them in this. The EFL is, or is supposed to be , a trade asssociation of the 72 clubs. Sure it has to organise the competitions too, so it's much more than the average TA. But even so it is answerable to club bosses.
There definitely needs to be an attempt to get some full answers about this after the event. But I expect it will only happen if some serious journos decide it's a story.
Final question. I assume the figures for tickets sold by the club don't include hospitality. But even if a lot of them are corp boxes and freebies, I'm pretty sure the lounge I'm in holds at least 700, (anyone know) and they mainly seemed like Charlton fans to me in 2019, so there probably will really be 40k Charlton in the stadium. Whether its more than 2019, is more doubtful but it really pisses me off that it obviously could have been.
I used to have a soft spot for Orient as my Grandad supported them before the 2nd World War. Uncle Adolf decided to bomb London and I ended being born in Chelsfield.
I have a lot to thank Uncle Adolf for despite his faults.
But on a serious note fuck Orient I hope we smash the pricks.
The only soft spot I have for Orient is Hackney Marshes
it seems infuriating to me but I freely admit to not having studied Wembley in detail so quite happy to be put bang to rights here by those that have....
So the capacity is 90k. But some of those seats are "corporate" i.e not part of the club allocation? Correct? How many? If it's as much as 10k, then I see the problem. The effective max split evenly per club is 40k each. Which would imply that we have sold our limit in our half of the stadium? And therefore any new tickets come from areas which are on Orient's side of the stadium?
Then I suppose that if one teams fans are housed on the wrong side of the half way line there needs to be some gap between the two sets of fans, as in the Jimmy Seed last week. It may well be that this is where plod gets involved. If things like this look really bizarre (like holding back the home team's fans after the match rather than the away team's, remember that?) then it's the dead hand of plod at work.
Some people are also saying that the way Wembley sell the blocks might end up making a neat segregation more difficult. If that's so that's on Wembley. How many matches worth of experience, how much data have they accumulated by now? They ought to have forecasting models by now that could have told Orient how much they will end up with based on the say, the first three days of sales. Well, they ought to...
As for the EFL, I don't see a role for them in this. The EFL is, or is supposed to be , a trade asssociation of the 72 clubs. Sure it has to organise the competitions too, so it's much more than the average TA. But even so it is answerable to club bosses.
There definitely needs to be an attempt to get some full answers about this after the event. But I expect it will only happen if some serious journos decide it's a story.
Final question. I assume the figures for tickets sold by the club don't include hospitality. But even if a lot of them are corp boxes and freebies, I'm pretty sure the lounge I'm in holds at least 700, (anyone know) and they mainly seemed like Charlton fans to me in 2019, so there probably will really be 40k Charlton in the stadium. Whether its more than 2019, is more doubtful but it really pisses me off that it obviously could have been.
Wembley Stadium has a total seating capacity of 90,000. The seats are divided into three tiers: the lower tier has 34,303 seats, the middle tier has 16,532 seats, and the upper tier has 39,165 seats.
I used to have a soft spot for Orient as my Grandad supported them before the 2nd World War. Uncle Adolf decided to bomb London and I ended being born in Chelsfield.
I have a lot to thank Uncle Adolf for despite his faults.
But on a serious note fuck Orient I hope we smash the pricks.
I had to read that a second time before I realised your grandfather was not Adolf!
So are we going to end up with a smaller allocation than 2019 when we played against a much bigger club? It’s a really bizarre situation.
No on par with 2019
Which suggests there is no conspiracy. There is clearly a threshold where it becomes viable for one of the two clubs to get a significant increase in tickets. And you work back from 90,000 to included segregation / hospitality etc. where both clubs initially get 38,000. I reckon if one club sells under 20/15,000 that is when you see 10k tickets being reallocated to the other club. But if both clubs sell over 20-25,000 reallocation becomes harder to do, beyond a few blocks.
It’s up to clubs how fans can buy tickets. The likes of Sheffield United & Sunderland probably had more restrictions on how many tickets individuals can buy.
Attendance back in 2019 was over 76,000 in which Charlton had over 38,000 that afternoon
By a few thousand. Which is exactly my point. Wembley will reallocate a few blocks if one club doesn’t sell out, but they’ll only reallocate significant amounts of tickets if one club sells under 20/15,000. Which looks to be the case if you look back at various play-off finals.
If you are correct (and I have no reason to challenge you) the club could have said from the start we only get more if Orient sell less than x number.
I reckon the club didn’t expect the demand to be so high that they needed to issue warnings.
I just think my theory, as that is all it is, makes sense if you look at past play-off finals.
Let’s just look at our neighbours & my other half’s much loved club.
In 2009, Millwall faced Scunthorpe. Scunny failed to shift much more than 7,000. Millwall were allocated some of Scunthorpe’s tickets pretty much straight away & eventually sold 49,661.
The following season, Millwall played Swindon & sold out their initial 37,000 allocation. But didn’t get any more, as Swindon sold c30,000. The overall attendance was 73,180. With Millwall saying that the total number of Lions fans attending was over 40,000 if including hospitality tickets.
So there seems to be a threshold. Millwall weren’t even allocated a few thousand more, most likely as they were seen as high risk segregation wise, given Swindon took 30,000 of their 37,000 allocation.
Which is why I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy against Charlton. It’s just the way Wembley do it - for good or bad. Clearly it isn’t ideal, as you end up with empty seats despite demand.
So are we going to end up with a smaller allocation than 2019 when we played against a much bigger club? It’s a really bizarre situation.
No on par with 2019
Which suggests there is no conspiracy. There is clearly a threshold where it becomes viable for one of the two clubs to get a significant increase in tickets. And you work back from 90,000 to included segregation / hospitality etc. where both clubs initially get 38,000. I reckon if one club sells under 20/15,000 that is when you see 10k tickets being reallocated to the other club. But if both clubs sell over 20-25,000 reallocation becomes harder to do, beyond a few blocks.
It’s up to clubs how fans can buy tickets. The likes of Sheffield United & Sunderland probably had more restrictions on how many tickets individuals can buy.
Attendance back in 2019 was over 76,000 in which Charlton had over 38,000 that afternoon
By a few thousand. Which is exactly my point. Wembley will reallocate a few blocks if one club doesn’t sell out, but they’ll only reallocate significant amounts of tickets if one club sells under 20/15,000. Which looks to be the case if you look back at various play-off finals.
If you are correct (and I have no reason to challenge you) the club could have said from the start we only get more if Orient sell less than x number.
I reckon the club didn’t expect the demand to be so high that they needed to issue warnings.
I just think my theory, as that is all it is, makes sense if you look at past play-off finals.
Let’s just look at our neighbours & my other half’s much loved club.
In 2009, Millwall faced Scunthorpe. Scunny failed to shift much more than 7,000. Millwall were allocated some of Scunthorpe’s tickets pretty much straight away & eventually sold 49,661.
The following season, Millwall played Swindon & sold out their initial 37,000 allocation. But didn’t get any more, as Swindon sold c30,000. The overall attendance was 73,180. With Millwall saying that the total number of Lions fans attending was over 40,000 if including hospitality tickets.
So there seems to be a threshold. Millwall weren’t even allocated a few thousand more, most likely as they were seen as high risk segregation wise, given Swindon took 30,000 of their 37,000 allocation.
Which is why I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy against Charlton. It’s just the way Wembley do it - for good or bad. Clearly it isn’t ideal, as you end up with empty seats despite demand.
So what’s the nonsense ‘we have asked for more’ if it’s always a no no?
I’m not blaming the club for the numbers I’m saying we are following a tried and tested process from the EFL / Wembley that could be transparent.
So are we going to end up with a smaller allocation than 2019 when we played against a much bigger club? It’s a really bizarre situation.
No on par with 2019
Which suggests there is no conspiracy. There is clearly a threshold where it becomes viable for one of the two clubs to get a significant increase in tickets. And you work back from 90,000 to included segregation / hospitality etc. where both clubs initially get 38,000. I reckon if one club sells under 20/15,000 that is when you see 10k tickets being reallocated to the other club. But if both clubs sell over 20-25,000 reallocation becomes harder to do, beyond a few blocks.
It’s up to clubs how fans can buy tickets. The likes of Sheffield United & Sunderland probably had more restrictions on how many tickets individuals can buy.
Attendance back in 2019 was over 76,000 in which Charlton had over 38,000 that afternoon
By a few thousand. Which is exactly my point. Wembley will reallocate a few blocks if one club doesn’t sell out, but they’ll only reallocate significant amounts of tickets if one club sells under 20/15,000. Which looks to be the case if you look back at various play-off finals.
If you are correct (and I have no reason to challenge you) the club could have said from the start we only get more if Orient sell less than x number.
I reckon the club didn’t expect the demand to be so high that they needed to issue warnings.
I just think my theory, as that is all it is, makes sense if you look at past play-off finals.
Let’s just look at our neighbours & my other half’s much loved club.
In 2009, Millwall faced Scunthorpe. Scunny failed to shift much more than 7,000. Millwall were allocated some of Scunthorpe’s tickets pretty much straight away & eventually sold 49,661.
The following season, Millwall played Swindon & sold out their initial 37,000 allocation. But didn’t get any more, as Swindon sold c30,000. The overall attendance was 73,180. With Millwall saying that the total number of Lions fans attending was over 40,000 if including hospitality tickets.
So there seems to be a threshold. Millwall weren’t even allocated a few thousand more, most likely as they were seen as high risk segregation wise, given Swindon took 30,000 of their 37,000 allocation.
Which is why I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy against Charlton. It’s just the way Wembley do it - for good or bad. Clearly it isn’t ideal, as you end up with empty seats despite demand.
So what’s the nonsense ‘we have asked for more’ if it’s always a no no?
I’m not blaming the club for the numbers I’m saying we are following a tried and tested process from the EFL / Wembley that could be transparent.
I don’t think it’s a case of definitely no more. More that they can only reallocate a few thousand, not the 10,000 or more people want.
Millwall were probably refused any more v Swindon based on police advice, as Swindon filled 30,000 of their 37,000 allocation.
it seems infuriating to me but I freely admit to not having studied Wembley in detail so quite happy to be put bang to rights here by those that have....
So the capacity is 90k. But some of those seats are "corporate" i.e not part of the club allocation? Correct? How many? If it's as much as 10k, then I see the problem. The effective max split evenly per club is 40k each. Which would imply that we have sold our limit in our half of the stadium? And therefore any new tickets come from areas which are on Orient's side of the stadium?
Then I suppose that if one teams fans are housed on the wrong side of the half way line there needs to be some gap between the two sets of fans, as in the Jimmy Seed last week. It may well be that this is where plod gets involved. If things like this look really bizarre (like holding back the home team's fans after the match rather than the away team's, remember that?) then it's the dead hand of plod at work.
Some people are also saying that the way Wembley sell the blocks might end up making a neat segregation more difficult. If that's so that's on Wembley. How many matches worth of experience, how much data have they accumulated by now? They ought to have forecasting models by now that could have told Orient how much they will end up with based on the say, the first three days of sales. Well, they ought to...
As for the EFL, I don't see a role for them in this. The EFL is, or is supposed to be , a trade asssociation of the 72 clubs. Sure it has to organise the competitions too, so it's much more than the average TA. But even so it is answerable to club bosses.
There definitely needs to be an attempt to get some full answers about this after the event. But I expect it will only happen if some serious journos decide it's a story.
Final question. I assume the figures for tickets sold by the club don't include hospitality. But even if a lot of them are corp boxes and freebies, I'm pretty sure the lounge I'm in holds at least 700, (anyone know) and they mainly seemed like Charlton fans to me in 2019, so there probably will really be 40k Charlton in the stadium. Whether its more than 2019, is more doubtful but it really pisses me off that it obviously could have been.
Below is the answer I got from Gemini AI.
Wembley Stadium sells a significant number of membership tickets, primarily through its Club Wembley program. These memberships are designed to provide premium hospitality and guaranteed access to a range of major events throughout the year.
Number of Membership Tickets:
Wembley Stadium offers several tiers of Club Wembley memberships, including:
Inner Circle
Centre Circle
Number Nine
The Bobby Moore Club
One Twenty (a very exclusive tier with only 120 spaces)
Private Boxes
While an exact total number of Club Wembley membership seats isn't publicly stated, it's known to be a substantial portion of the stadium's middle tier. For example, Club Wembley seats are located in the middle tier, which has 16,532 seats in total. This implies a significant number of these seats are allocated to members. These memberships typically involve a three-season commitment.
How this reduces the number of tickets available for a play-off final:
Crucially, Championship, League One, and League Two Play-Off Finals are also often included as events that Club Wembley members have access to.
Therefore, when a play-off final is held at Wembley, the existence of these Club Wembley memberships means that a large number of the stadium's best seats (those in the middle tier) are already allocated to these members. This directly reduces the number of tickets available for general sale to the fans of the participating teams.
For play-off finals, the competing clubs are allocated a specific number of tickets, usually for the East and West stands. For example, teams might be allocated around 30,000 to 37,000 tickets each, depending on the league. The North and South stands are generally reserved for corporate guests, which includes Club Wembley members.
In essence, the Club Wembley membership system reserves a significant portion of the stadium for premium ticket holders, limiting the total pool of tickets that can be distributed to the general fanbase of the clubs involved in a play-off final.
If they weren't considering giving us extra tickets then why force Orient to sell block by block, or did Orient go beyond the level of sales where that was possible?
So are we going to end up with a smaller allocation than 2019 when we played against a much bigger club? It’s a really bizarre situation.
I know I have said it before(and yes I know I'm a boring little c***), but if we'd had personal callers last Saturday and Sunday I'd strongly suggest we'd have shifted a lot more tickets. This, in that we'd have potentially sold out by Tuesday and Wembley could have released more.
I can foresee on Sunday that Charlton fans will be looking at many blocks of seats that could have been released and they'd be upset having friends and family that could have gone.
I’m not sure selling tickets online slowed down how quickly we sold out.
If they weren't considering giving us extra tickets then why force Orient to sell block by block, or did Orient go beyond the level of sales where that was possible?
I think they must have. If Orient had sold nearer 20k then I think we’d have got a lot more
So are we going to end up with a smaller allocation than 2019 when we played against a much bigger club? It’s a really bizarre situation.
I know I have said it before(and yes I know I'm a boring little c***), but if we'd had personal callers last Saturday and Sunday I'd strongly suggest we'd have shifted a lot more tickets. This, in that we'd have potentially sold out by Tuesday and Wembley could have released more.
I can foresee on Sunday that Charlton fans will be looking at many blocks of seats that could have been released and they'd be upset having friends and family that could have gone.
I’m not sure selling tickets online slowed down how quickly we sold out.
If they weren't considering giving us extra tickets then why force Orient to sell block by block, or did Orient go beyond the level of sales where that was possible?
I think they must have. If Orient had sold nearer 20k then I think we’d have got a lot more
Possibly but it has been obvious for days how many they would sell, so why not communicate the issue.
Comments
Yep, we can start on the pricks and work our way upwards...
,,,,😉
I had to read that a second time before I realised your grandfather was not Adolf!
Bigger clubs will sell the vast majority of their allocation in events like this, that's how it goes. If this happens again in the future with a play-off final (hopefully) we can't be requesting more tickets than what we got here. We won't be entitled to them.
All the high horse stuff with demanding tickets and getting on the back of another club about their tickets sales is ridiculous.
Our average attendance has been under 60% for a whole season. We have no right to be calling out another club for their ticket sales and how tickets should be made available etc imo.
So the capacity is 90k. But some of those seats are "corporate" i.e not part of the club allocation? Correct? How many? If it's as much as 10k, then I see the problem. The effective max split evenly per club is 40k each. Which would imply that we have sold our limit in our half of the stadium? And therefore any new tickets come from areas which are on Orient's side of the stadium?
Then I suppose that if one teams fans are housed on the wrong side of the half way line there needs to be some gap between the two sets of fans, as in the Jimmy Seed last week. It may well be that this is where plod gets involved. If things like this look really bizarre (like holding back the home team's fans after the match rather than the away team's, remember that?) then it's the dead hand of plod at work.
Some people are also saying that the way Wembley sell the blocks might end up making a neat segregation more difficult. If that's so that's on Wembley. How many matches worth of experience, how much data have they accumulated by now? They ought to have forecasting models by now that could have told Orient how much they will end up with based on the say, the first three days of sales. Well, they ought to...
As for the EFL, I don't see a role for them in this. The EFL is, or is supposed to be , a trade asssociation of the 72 clubs. Sure it has to organise the competitions too, so it's much more than the average TA. But even so it is answerable to club bosses.
There definitely needs to be an attempt to get some full answers about this after the event. But I expect it will only happen if some serious journos decide it's a story.
Final question. I assume the figures for tickets sold by the club don't include hospitality. But even if a lot of them are corp boxes and freebies, I'm pretty sure the lounge I'm in holds at least 700, (anyone know) and they mainly seemed like Charlton fans to me in 2019, so there probably will really be 40k Charlton in the stadium. Whether its more than 2019, is more doubtful but it really pisses me off that it obviously could have been.
I'll be 200+ miles away, but if I were there - no if, no buts ;-)
Beaten to it by Soapy
Fair play
Now let's smash the fuckers on Sunday
Let’s just look at our neighbours & my other half’s much loved club.
In 2009, Millwall faced Scunthorpe. Scunny failed to shift much more than 7,000. Millwall were allocated some of Scunthorpe’s tickets pretty much straight away & eventually sold 49,661.
The following season, Millwall played Swindon & sold out their initial 37,000 allocation. But didn’t get any more, as Swindon sold c30,000. The overall attendance was 73,180. With Millwall saying that the total number of Lions fans attending was over 40,000 if including hospitality tickets.
I’m not blaming the club for the numbers I’m saying we are following a tried and tested process from the EFL / Wembley that could be transparent.
Less than it should be, unfortunately
Below is the answer I got from Gemini AI.
Wembley Stadium sells a significant number of membership tickets, primarily through its Club Wembley program. These memberships are designed to provide premium hospitality and guaranteed access to a range of major events throughout the year.
Number of Membership Tickets:
Wembley Stadium offers several tiers of Club Wembley memberships, including:
While an exact total number of Club Wembley membership seats isn't publicly stated, it's known to be a substantial portion of the stadium's middle tier. For example, Club Wembley seats are located in the middle tier, which has 16,532 seats in total. This implies a significant number of these seats are allocated to members. These memberships typically involve a three-season commitment.
How this reduces the number of tickets available for a play-off final:
Crucially, Championship, League One, and League Two Play-Off Finals are also often included as events that Club Wembley members have access to.
Therefore, when a play-off final is held at Wembley, the existence of these Club Wembley memberships means that a large number of the stadium's best seats (those in the middle tier) are already allocated to these members. This directly reduces the number of tickets available for general sale to the fans of the participating teams.
For play-off finals, the competing clubs are allocated a specific number of tickets, usually for the East and West stands. For example, teams might be allocated around 30,000 to 37,000 tickets each, depending on the league. The North and South stands are generally reserved for corporate guests, which includes Club Wembley members.
In essence, the Club Wembley membership system reserves a significant portion of the stadium for premium ticket holders, limiting the total pool of tickets that can be distributed to the general fanbase of the clubs involved in a play-off final.