Club apologises to fans over ticket woes

Fans had difficulty entering the St Andrews stadium on Wednesday night

Birmingham City Football Club has apologised to fans after many experienced difficulties entering the stadium on Wednesday night.

The club said a large number of Blues supporters were inconvenienced due to not all tickets arriving in the post, while print-at-home tickets had a corrupt barcode.

This meant the new turnstile system did not recognise the tickets.

A spokesperson said: "The club would like to apologise to supporters for the inconvenience and thank them all for their understanding and good humour while the issue was resolved."

They added that the club hoped that fans enjoyed the performance on the pitch, with the Blues beating Rangers 2-1 in the Trevor Francis Memorial Match.

While the club posted tickets on Saturday and Sunday, it said "some were not fulfilled".

The club also said an operation override was implemented once the issue with corrupt barcodes was identified.

A spokesperson said: "To avoid this problem happening in the future, the club have now disabled print-at-home tickets and going forward, we will only use digital tickets or paper tickets collected at the Stadium."

The club said it would be in touch with supporters who had purchased print-at-home tickets for the pre-season game against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday 3 August.

Supporters are being asked to arrive early for that match kicking-off off at 15:00 BST, to ensure everyone enters on time.