England Supporters Club

ESTC Second Sales Explained

Posted by Team England at 15:40 on Tuesday 07 February 2017

Following the completion of the Scotland v England ticket sale Travel Club members may want to note the following information regarding the sales process.

There is no “second ballot” for the second chance sale, it is simply a first-come, first-served sale for all 2016-2018 Travel Club members who missed out in the first sale.  Some of you have suggested that the second sale should only be open to those who registered in the first instance.  The issue with this is that it would encourage many more members to register for a match which they are unlikely to attend just to be sure that they could access the second sale should their plans change.  This in turn would result in the caps cut off for being guaranteed a ticket being much higher than it should have been.  Experience has shown that the number of members who access the second sale without having first registered is very small and so not impacting the access to tickets greatly.

For members purchasing tickets via the website, the ticketing portal will allow a number of people to enter the site as soon as it opens without queuing.  This number is preset by us depending on how many tickets are available to ensure that tickets are available for all those who enter the site at this time.  Everyone else is then placed in a queue and you will be moved into the ticketing site as soon as someone else has left it by completing their transaction and if tickets are still available. 

When you join the queue for a ticket, the system will estimate how long you have to wait  to select your ticket(s) based on the number of fans who are ahead of you. The time will also vary depending on how long it takes other supporters ahead of you to complete their purchase.

So, although you may be 10^th in a queue, this doesn’t mean that there are only 9 people in front of you before you can select your ticket . There are 9 people in front of you in the queue, plus the members who are already in the ticketing site selecting their seats. 

Ticketmaster are also able to sell tickets through their call centre on our behalf.  They have access to the same tickets as the online site.  It’s a personal choice whether you wish to queue to speak to an operator to try to secure your tickets or try online, both routes have their merits and so many members will try both to increase their chances of securing a ticket.

This match sold out at 12.05pm today but a few people were able to buy tickets after this time for the following reasons. The tickets will remain in your basket for 10 minutes and some people do take 10 minutes to enter their payment details and complete the transaction.  So, at 12.05pm all tickets were allocated to members but not all were paid for by this time.  By 12.15pm all tickets were paid for with the exception of a couple of members who failed to complete their transaction and so these tickets were released back for sale and sold via Ticketmaster.

We are now operating a wait list for this match and as is the case with every single away match we do expect to receive a number of cancellations in the coming weeks and months.  These will be allocated to those on the wait list with the highest caps total.

Please be assured that we have also requested additional tickets from the SFA and we will let members know should any become available.