The wait for a bespoke new Ferrari is over two years, for a Hermès “Birkin” handbag you have to wait nine months, and in some parts of the country the Daily Telegraph claims the waiting list for an allotment is up to 40 years.
So what about that other valuable commodity, the Manchester United Football Club Season Ticket? If you join the waiting list, how long do you have to wait?
You only have to wait 4 hours.
That’s how long it took one red to receive the following email, having registered himself, as an experiment, on the waiting list earlier the same day:
The following day, he received another email with a link to United’s (new this season) “Season Ticket waiting list booklet”. As IMUSA have pointed out, this shows season tickets available everywhere with “limited availability” in the Family Stand (understandably) and North Stand Tier 3, the perennially unpopular “little Oslo” where fans find out what top flight football looks like when viewed through a distant letter box. Limited availability in NT3? Or perhaps the only part of the ground not visible on TV?
The prize for the most amusingly desperate attempt of this renewals season (and a sad reflection on the club’s fabled CRM database) is won by this (from a Red Issue Sanctuary contributor):
“A few years ago my daughter (then 13) registered on MUFC.com [sic] in order to download photos of Ronaldo. This morning they have written to her asking if she would like a season ticket.”
The club remain tight lipped about renewals of course, and financially it is the widely reported collapse in executive/hospitality sales that will have the biggest impact. I’m sure that bond investors will be keen to quiz the club on all this on the next quarterly results call on 27th August.
LUHG