Fans rally clubs with season ticket sales amid coronavirus uncertainty
- Published
Clubs have sold thousands of season tickets despite uncertainty about next season
Fans of Scotland's biggest football clubs continue to snap up season tickets for next term despite continued uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Early sales of season books at Aberdeen have just passed the 6,000 mark, with the club aiming for 10,000 by July. It has already reached its target of 6,000 AberDNA subscriptions.
The sales at Motherwell have "far surpassed" last season, with over 2,000 fans renewing.
Hibernian have had a double boost. Recent season ticket sales are up at 8,000 while the NHS-inspired replica kit has been the club's fastest selling home kit on record. City rivals Hearts have hit 5,000 sales despite relegation.
St Mirren say their season ticket sales sit at 1,200 so far, with Livingston on track to equal last year's number and newly-promoted Dundee United shifting 2,500 to date.
Hamilton Academical, Kilmarnock, Ross County and St Johnstone have decided to not yet make season tickets available.
It all points to an encouraging trend for Scotland's top clubs, with fans willing to shell out despite not knowing when matches will restart, when fans will be allowed back into grounds, and, depending on the outcome of reconstruction talks, some not even having clarity on what division their side will be playing in.
'Fans should check terms and conditions'
Adam French, consumer rights expert at Which?
For season ticket holders, you do need to check terms and conditions. A lot come with force majeure terms, for example you do need to check the contract to see if they've included a pandemic/epidemic as a reason to dissolve the contract.
Even then, it's not guaranteed that term is enforceable, but you just have to be aware that some clubs have put that in the Ts and Cs as a reason not to refund you. It's all very grey, we don't know how enforceable those will be because they've not really come up before.
If they're going to play games behind closed doors and making the games exclusively available to season ticket holders, then you're still getting some value for what you've done there, they've made the best of that situation, so you would probably be due a partial refund, if anything at all - that's very much a case by case basis.