The Gas Trust is calling for the club to carry out an urgent review of its ticketing arrangements for the Swindon Town match on April 28th in order to ensure that we are not pricing the very fans that we are most trying to attract out of the game and also that we are not undermining the home support for what could be a vital fixture.

Tickets for the fixture went on sale on Tuesday and, as has been widely reported, the club have passed on the high cost of policing the game to supporters through the abandonment of the Early Bird initiative which saves fans £2 a ticket when buying in advance and have also added a further £1 surcharge on all match tickets.

The Trust has already gone on record as saying that we are concerned by the club’s decision to pass on the additional costs of policing the fixture to supporters at short notice when it was clear at the start of the season that this would need to be a highly policed game anyway. We believe that it sets a dangerous precedent for prices for future games rising according to the opposition – where this is in place at other clubs there is categorisation of games in advance of the fixtures and this is set out at the start of the season in the matchday pricing policy so that fans are aware of when costs will increase. There is no such warning in Rovers’ matchday pricing information on the website, nor in the Fans’ Charter.

However, we are currently more concerned by the impact that the pricing policy of this game could have on both the younger generations of supporters who are so critical to the future of the club and in the more immediate term on our chances of securing a play-off spot.

Although it has not been formally announced by the club, Swindon have been allocated the whole of the XXXX Stand and have already sold out their initial allocation of 1,230. A large number of family groups take advantage of the cheaper seats in that stand and while it is to be presumed that those with season tickets will be moved to the MCE Stand at no additional cost, there is a real danger that family groups who do not have season tickets and who want to sit down will be priced out of the fixture. The cheapest seats available to home supporters will be £21 for adults and £13 for children, as compared with the normal £15/£8 structure for seats in the XXXX Stand with the Early Bird discount. As an example of how hard this will hit family groups, an adult wanting to take two children along to the Swindon game would have to pay a total of £46, an increase of nearly 50% on the usual outlay for League games.

The club has stated on many occasions how important families and young supporters are to the future of the club. This was recently stressed in new chairman Ron Craig’s opening statement, when he spoke of the importance of growing the club’s fanbase through young people. And in his programme notes for the recent Bury game, Fans’ Director Ken Masters said the following: “Supporters are what football clubs need most of all. Bringing on young fans these days is as important as bring on young players. It is so easy for our next generation to tag on to the successes of a premier league club instead of following the tradition of their local league club”.

However, the pricing policy as it currently stands for the Swindon game flies directly in the face of those sentiments and serves only to alienate a group of supporters whose backing is going to be critical to Rovers’ future, especially considering that we are shortly planning to move out of Bristol for eighteen months. In the immediate term, however, with Swindon having already sold their initial allocation of 1,230 tickets and asking for more tickets, it will be imperative if Rovers are still in the hunt for a play-off spot that as many Gasheads as possible are in the ground. This could be threatened by the current pricing arrangements. We are therefore urging the Board to reconsider the pricing structure for the game in order to ensure that youngsters and accompanying adults are not priced out of the game by being charged above the rate they normally are charged for games in the Family Terrace or South Stand (including early birds).