The Swansea City Supporters’ Trust welcomes the opening of the 2024/25 Season Ticket window today, and supporters can now secure their Season Tickets for next season. This will be the first time at the Swansea.com Stadium where supporters can take up the offer for Safe Standing, which we are happy to see being introduced next season in approximately 1400 seats.
The Trust has long supported the club’s approach to rewarding supporters by keeping season ticket prices low and encouraging as many supporters as possible to take advantage of this. This was especially notable during the Covid-19 pandemic and the post-pandemic offers that the club instituted. However, we also recognise that this flat pricing approach hasn’t always been in the best commercial interests of the club and has contributed to the challenge in balancing the finances of the club on an annual basis.
In the cost-of-living crisis, we acknowledge the club has faced a significant increase in operating costs, and an increase in prices and thus commercial revenue is a key component in making the club more sustainable and self-sufficient. However, we are pleased to see that the club has made several concessions for supporters to help ease the burden that increased prices could cause and endorse these fully.
This includes:
- The continuation of an extended early-bird window, which will run until 16th February 2024.
- Introducing a ‘Swans Cash’ rewards system that is available to those who renew early in the window. Those able to renew this month will offset their ST price increase in full, with a £40 loyalty cash voucher to use in the Swans Store.
- Continuation of the financing option for supporters who would like to spread the cost of their ticket over a longer payment period (five or 10 months).
Overall, Swansea City supporters will continue to benefit from some of the most affordable season tickets available in the EFL Championship, and the price rises for the upcoming season equate to less than £2 per game in the early bird window.
The price of a post-early bird ticket will also equate to less than £20 per game. We feel that this remains very good value and appreciate the work the club has done to retain this offer. We are working in parallel with the club on the implementation of improvements to the matchday experience, which we hope will bring about positive changes and ensure that as many of the Jack Army return as possible.
Trust involvement
The Trust Board has been in discussions with the club for several months on season ticket pricing and have had several rounds of positive discussions with Richard Morris (Head of Commercial) on the rationale, approach, and options around pricing for 2024/25. We would like to thank Richard for the way in which he has engaged with us and welcomed our feedback and challenge.
As part of our discussions, the Commercial team took us through the rationale for their pricing approach for 2024/25. There has been significant effort put into benchmarking and analysis by the club, and the prices are benchmarked against other Championship clubs who broadly mirror Swansea in terms of socio-economic background of supporters, average attendance, stadium capacity, and recent footballing history. This has allowed the club to make more targeted increases to specific categories, but even with these increases we will still have one of the lowest season ticket prices across the Championship.
The Trust Board has spent many hours reviewing and analysing the data and information shared by the club and provided a formal set of recommendations and suggestions on the proposals to the club, some of which have been implemented as part of the offer.
The recommendations from the Trust taken forward are:
- Including all Swansea Women’s and U21 fixtures played at the Swansea.com Stadium in the Season Ticket package for the first time, creating the first true Club Season Ticket.
- Marginal increase only to cost of an U12 ticket, to ensure that we are encouraging the next generation of supporters to attend games and build a fanbase that will be with us for the next 50 years.
Several other recommendations were not deemed feasible during our discussions, and we accept that as part of the process not everything can be taken forward, but we appreciate the consideration that each was given. We will continue to work with the club on affordability of tickets and initiatives, including for away matches. There has been significant good news on this lately, with reciprocal pricing offers for our recent game at Stoke, and subsidised travel for away supporters for our Boxing Day fixture at Southampton. We’d like to credit the club and their partners for this effort.
We also hope to see the announcement of a new manager in the coming days and are being kept up to date on developments by the club on this. Whilst the Trust are not formally part of the selection process, we have provided input and feedback into the club that we have heard from supporters on the traits and characteristics of the future manager and the required style of play that has been synonymous with Swansea for so long.
We would encourage all supporters to take advantage of the early bird offer if they are able and pick up some Swansea merchandise using the Swans Cash offer.
The full information regarding season tickets and how to purchase them is available on the club’s website, HERE
We continue to constantly collect and address your feedback and questions, and if you have any questions that are not answered as part of the club’s release, please email us on supporters@swanstrust.co.uk
Swansea City Supporters’ Trust
Thursday 14th December 2023
