Fan experience review : The richest game in Football
It was a trip to Wembley on Sunday for our growth marketer Connor and it definitely didn’t disappoint with two time European champions Nottingham Forest making a return to the Premier League after 23 years in what is known as the richest game of football!
Just over 80,000 were there in attendance on the day, a sold out forest end (36k) with Huddersfield on the slightly lower side of roughly 30,000 with the rest made up of sponsors and corporate guests.
Connor gave his thoughts on the experience and how it compares to others:
Transport Links
We made the decision to get out to Wembley in plenty of time, took the Jubilee line from Waterloo to Wembley Park and there you are right at the top of Wembley Way.
As I write this I'm getting ready for another one of Scotland’s biggest games in years and when it comes to transport there has been plenty in the news about the struggles with Scotrail and the problems fans all across the country were facing. Just two days before the game it was impossible to get back to Edinburgh after the game with the last train departing at 10:15 and only yesterday did they finally announce a number of late services from Glasgow.
The other thing is how surprisingly organised getting back from Wembley is in comparison to the likes of Hampden, trains back into the centre every couple and good queue management certainly helps but tonight for example we’ll see one train every ten minutes from Mount Florida if you are lucky and be ordered into queues by police on horses rather than a cheery volunteer with a microphone!
Things to do around the ground.
One thing that I noticed was the number of people who arrived at the ground when we did, which was around 5 hours before kick off. Sure, the appeal of fan zones and countless pubs probably helped but it’s something that doesn’t usually happen up here in Scotland.
I’ve not had the luxury of attending many cup finals as an Aberdeen and Forest fan but those i have been to it’s been a case of leaving the pub and getting into the ground as close to kick off as possible but down on Sunday we went into the ground as soon as gates opened (Two hours before KO) and we certainly weren’t alone with decent food and beer options available. Although some of the beer serving capabilities were questionable, don’t think bar experience was a requirement in the application process….
Pricing
It certainly wasn’t a cheap day out with the most expensive tickets set at £98 and £7 beers when in the ground, although the cheapest tickets were £36 there were very little of these available. We were able to get some pretty good seats in category 4 but any further back would have been a struggle to see!
Notice the £1.25 transaction print-at-home delivery fee, yes you had to pay Ticketmaster to print your own ticket and you actually had to print them out. None of this showing on your mobile malarky, that would be far too easy wouldn’t it…
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