Poor Ticket Sales For FA Semi-Finals

The ticket sales for the FA Cup semi-finals have been slow and no where near sold out. In view of the poor sales the Football Association has defended its choice of venues. I just wonder if it isn’t a combination of the venue and the ticket prices. Knowing the FA, the prices won’t be cheap!

Apparently Watford have 1,500 tickets left unsold for Saturday’s semi-final against Manchester United at Villa Park.

But that’s nothing compared to the other semi to be held at Old Trafford on Sunday between Blackburn and Chelsea. Both have failed to sell 8,000 seats of their allocations. I know Old Trafford is a big stadium and can probably cope with having 16,000 empty seat, but that’s still a huge number and let’s face it, this is an FA Cup semi-final. Few games are bigger than this. This is one of the show piece games of the season and the FA should be doing everything possible to ensure the stadia are full. These games will be seen around the world by potentially hundreds of millions of fans and I don’t know about you, but seeing empty seats at such a game doesn’t look too good.

An FA spokesman said: “Old Trafford and Villa Park are established venues, used to dealing with the logistics.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly Man United are the only club out of the four left to have sold out their allocation for the semi-final at Villa Park, which has a capacity of 42,000.

A little more surprising is Blackburn’s failure to sell their allocation of 30,900 when you consider that Ewood Park is only a 37-mile trip from Old Trafford.

But as I said above, the price of the tickets may have more to do with it and the Blackburn Independent Supporters’ Association have in deed blamed the cost of tickets.

They said, “Our catchment area is basically just Blackburn, which is a small town.

“It’s also a low-wage area. Even forking out the minimum of £25 per ticket is a lot, never mind the maximum £55.”

Chelsea fans, meanwhile, are upset that they face a long trip to Manchester for a 4pm kick-off on Sunday.

However, the FA argues that even if Old Trafford is not full, it will still mean more fans can attend the game than if it had been held elsewhere.

“The crowd will be bigger than at any other ground we could have staged the game,” said a spokesman.

“We want to make these occasions accessible to the fans. We feel the ticket prices are fair, and are appropriate to staging a big semi-final.”

From next year, the semi-finals will be held at the new Wembley Stadium, which has a capacity of nearly 90,000.

“We are confident we will see big crowds at Wembley for the semi-finals,” the FA spokesman said.

Holding the semis at Wembley. Another mistake and crass decision by the FA. I have never understood the reasoning in holding the semis at Wembley, other of course that it just means more revenue for the FA! Doesn’t it totally devalue actually playing the Final at Wembley? Well, it does to me. Isn’t part of the aura of getting to the FA Cup Final the fact that you are playing at Wembley? When the Final was played at Cardiff, why didn’t the FA play the semi finals there?

Maybe it’s just me, but I believe the Wembley should be the sole preserve of the Final and nothing else, as far as the FA Cup is concerned obviously.

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Many thanks
Rik