After 150 pages it's hardly surprising it's not easy trying to get a proper handle on things and whilst I don't want to add to that, there is a 'grey' area that hasn't been discussed more generally.
At pretty much every club there are supporters clubs - usually based upon a location and long-standing set-up, when a large group from a town or village would organise travel via a coach / minibus. I know quite a few people who are involved in branches at the bigger clubs, i.e. those who easily sell their away allocation. They mostly operate the same.
Clubs have historically (in my opinion) 'allowed' such branches to operate under slightly different rules for (I think) 2 reasons.
Firstly because the volunteers who run these clubs do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of getting tickets purchased, allocated and - subsequently - travel sorted. All the club have to do is sell by the easiest method possible and the team on the pitch benefit from the 'loyal' away following this helps create (try telling your mates who've travelled all over the country with, every two weeks, that you 'don't fancy' Shrewsbury on a midweek night and you'll soon lose face with them). When you go to almost every game with your group, it's the day-out that you go for when the football is crap (a blessing given our recent history).
The second big reason was that such groups tend to 'police' the younger / more rowdy element. No-one wants the whole group to be tainted by dickheads causing bother at a service station or in the local boozers & the consequences that come with that (a match ban if the lad who's taken your ticket acts the prick inside the ground soon focuses the mind, too).
In the modern era none of this is as straightforward as it used to be - whether that be around travel plans, or locality of members - but branches still operate in bringing fans together (sometimes, like in our overseas branches, to meet and watch the game together in a pub).
So, here's the nub of it. In the past, clubs have turned a blind eye to tickets being shared amongst the group, in whatever way works for that group. If 53 tickets are purchased en-masse using eligible ID's (a process our clubs policy allows thru the friends and family scheme) then the branch secretary gets on with the rest of it, safe in the knowledge that if it's over-subscribed he'll find a taker for a ticket even if someone drops out late, thus no-one being out of pocket.
I've been a part of such branches, and I've been a 'lone' supporter where you know the lad next to you might have benefited from taking a ticket off his mate because he just happens to be from a certain village in Co. Durham.
Not only have SAFC been complicit in this for many, many years... they've actively used the branch* in question here as something of a fallback position when it's suited them.
There's loads of examples, inc. getting a ticket in the away end for a 'VIP', or a PR exercise or - has happened at Luton a couple of year back, when they've messed up and realised there's 150 unsold tickets that they've needed to get rid of with less than 24 hours notice. At that point branch secretaries become the clubs best mates.
But we now have a different Chief Operations Officer and a different Ticket Office Manager. It would appear that these people are the belt and braces type and when 3 Leeds tickets have been found to be in the hands of people other than the named purchaser, they've asked the branch secretary for a 'word'.
Having been given honest answers, they've decided it's 'widespread misuse' of their process, and then imposed a ban on him across 3 seasons, as well as removing 65 derby tickets from others for no other reason that their branch* secretary made the purchase on their behalf (using their fairly acquired loyalty points). The club have since "recognised that some supporters have been affected through no fault of their own", but that hardly helps soften the blow, does it?
This episode shows the club in a very bad light. The lad they've scapegoated is one of the nicest and most helpful (and incredibly loyal) of supporters you'll ever meet. This action completely undermines the whole 'connected with fans' ethos they peddle to us in their marketing.
It's also throws up the incompetence of our ticket operations generally, as well as the question of where this all takes us, as fans, in the future. Are all branches going to be subjected to the same scrutiny? Can all supporters expect a draconian & heavy-handed sanction if they are complicit in a ticket being passed on between 2 SAFC supporters?
I believe there has been some concern in the club about the integrity of some supporters membership data held on the ticket portal, and who is 'authorised' to make changes on another's account under data protection, etc. Again, all this does is throw up questions about the clubs policy and processes (nb: there are over 200k membership numbers out there). I'm sure we've all seen people asking for membership ID's with a purchase history so that tickets can be purchased for certain home games this season. It's exactly the same thing.
The club could have reviewed all this properly (likely with the help of this branch* secretary, as they've done in the past) and taken the chance to involve supporters groups in designing a new, more joined-up process. They could have looked at their own part in the fiasco, i.e. the ticket offices inability to deal with even the most-straightforward of fans issues, which encourages fans to find their own solutions.
But they went in 2-footed and he we are. It begs the question whether being (hopefully) an established PL club, with designs on European football, will see the chasm between fans and club become greater, not less - as it has with many other PL clubs.
* The ticket office have long recognised this group as a 'proper' branch. If the protocol has not been followed internally to have it added to their Branch Liaison Council, that's down to the club, not the secretary.
