Newcastle United email I received this morning has ruined Christmas

Who needs the Grinch when you have got Newcastle United to ruin your Christmas?

This Christmas Eve morning, getting an email from the club.

Newcastle United informing me…‘Unfortunately, your application for the Mags Member Ballot has been unsuccessful for our Carabao Cup game against Manchester City.’

I should be immune to this now BUT in reality it feels ever worse.

The dispiriting nature of it dragging you down.

For anybody who isn’t aware of how the home ticketing thing works.

Basically, every Premier League game the Newcastle United members are given 24 hours to enter the ballot.

Then the morning after that window of opportunity closes, all of the members receive an email, saying whether or not you have been successful in that particular ballot, for that particular match. These emails sent out around about an hour before the successful ballot entrants can then go on the Newcastle United ticketing site to buy their tickets.

This Christmas Eve morning the club sending out the Manchester City emails. I wasn’t even aware of this gong to happen, so when I did see it in my emails this morning, after a big night out last night, forgive me if I am not feeling the Christmas love from our football club.

The thing is as well, the fact that Newcastle United currently have so many matches and especially so many at home, it has felt at times like almost every other day I am receiving an ‘unfortunately’ Newcastle United home ticket ballot result email.

My experience of these Newcastle United home ticket ballots and my ‘success’ rate, is nowhere near what the club have claimed the average is for members. I know a fair few other Newcastle United members and they are all the same, getting nothing like the success rate that the club claim.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I was successful in an NUFC Premier League match ticket ballot.

The club still refuse to do two things.

Make public how many Newcastle United members there are.

Make public how many tickets are up for grabs by those Newcastle United members in each ballot.

The only conclusions you can draw, are that the club don’t want to admit just how many Newcastle United members there are, nor how few tickets they allocate to these ballots.

Each (adult) Newcastle United member pays £37 per season (£20 for kids) to allow them to enter home ticket ballots and no wonder they don’t want to let on how poor your odds are of getting tickets! Many reports claim there are more than 100,000 Newcastle United members, so you could be looking at that generating revenue of around £4m, which is before any member has bought a single ticket…

As for how few tickets are made available to Newcastle United ballots? Well, my experience and that of other members I know, is that there must be very few tickets indeed that are made available.

As I said earlier, why the secrecy? Why don’t the club just tell us how many Newcastle United members there are AND how many tickets they are fighting over?

I still can’t believe just how many rejections I have had, how many ‘Unfortunately’ emails.

Anyway, Happy Christmas!

And as for those of you who are getting to see the inside of St James’ Park, make sure you that you appreciate it, because so many of us on the outside would love to be in your shoes.