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Manchester United have apparently been sparse with the truth when it comes to the amount of hospitality seats that they are selling at Old Trafford.
The issue has hit the headlines lately as the club got involved in a public spat with two former players, Norman Whiteside and Gordon Hill, over the moving of their season ticket seats.
Former United winger Hill felt aggrieved that he was being asked to move despite holding the seat since 1996 and took to X to make his displeasure public knowledge.
Looks like I will not be taking my season tickets after having them from 1996, and being told you will be relocated I can not believe this from a club I represented and played my heart out for. I was given a reason which was bloody ridiculous I will be speaking to Jim. Not happy
— Gordon Hill (@gordonhill54) March 1, 2024
Whiteside’s wife also took to social media to complain about the same issue but the club tried to resolve the issue by releasing a statement and indicated that the decision was motivated by the need to move matchday hospitality seats into consolidated blocks in an effort to address fan concerns about being dispersed around the grounds.
They also asserted that they would be not be creating more hospitality seats and in reality would be reducing the number of them by 450.
However, according to Toe in the Water’s X account, the truth of the matter is that they are showing no sign of reducing hospitality seats to improve regular fans’ experience, they just can’t sell them.
Hospitality seating at United
The club allocates up to 4% (3,000) seats to hospitality, if they can sell them
This season, hospitality averages only 2.3% (1,720 / game)
Only 1 game (versus Liverpool) hospitality sold out.
9 seats versus Palace! pic.twitter.com/epuMgR0LHl
— Toe In The Water (@ToeInTheWater1) May 4, 2024
It is reported that the club allocates around 3000 seats to hospitality for every home game, which is about 4% of the stadium’s capacity.
However, on average they only sell 1,720 a game, which works out at around 2.3% of capacity. Only the home game against Liverpool was sold out and a meagre nine seats were sold at home to Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup back in September.
The club makes no mention in its recently published figures of any decrease in the 4% of matchday tickets allocated to hospitality. It is hard to see therefore the promised 450 reduction anywhere, except in terms of the fact that the club has been unable to sell that entire 4%, and in fact has only sold 2.3%, due to a lack of demand.
In fact, if this 4% remains once stadium improvements increase capacity, the pure number of hospitality seats will go up accordingly.
So far, then, the club has not done what it promised Hill and Whiteside and the thousands of other fans who have been forcefully relocated.
It is clear that it has not been a great year for the club on or off the pitch as the club’s hygiene rating was drastically reduced due to serving raw chicken at an event and one fan was left so disappointed in the quality of the food on offer at the club during a Champions League tie, that he labelled the curry he was served as “dog food”.
The interest in generating profit above all is a hallmark of the Glazer regime and it is the type of embarrassing incident that INEOS will want to avoid and will aim to shed the club of this sort of reputation that has been built up over the years of Glazer power.
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