Nottingham Forest have made it a priority to “improve the fan experience” of buying tickets to watch the Reds in action.
And they have incorporated that into season card renewals for next term.
Supporters in the Trent End, Brian Clough Stand and Bridgford Stand have until March 16 to sign up again for 2020/21, with an exclusive window for those in the Peter Taylor Stand to follow as the club wait for approval for the planned redevelopment.
Forest say they are eager to make the renewal process as simple as possible, and as well as a new ticketing system being in place, a finance option has now been finalised.
“We’ve moved to Ticketmaster as the ticketing platform, although we still manage ticketing internally,” said chief commercial officer David Cook.
“I think some people think that we’re outsourcing to Ticketmaster, but that’s not the case. We will use the Ticketmaster platform, which is a lot more user friendly and there’s some different features on there that fans can use.
“For example, for the first time, disabled fans are able to renew online, and for their carers as well. That’s a really progressive step for how we do ticketing with our fans with accessible needs.
“It’s really simple and easy to use.”
From today, fans are able to renew their season cards at the ticket office or over the phone, but the club are also encouraging people to do so online - as well as activating a new ticketing account.
“What we’ve tried to do is encourage people to activate their accounts and try the online experience, because it’s much better than what it was in the past,” Cook said.
“We’ve sent all of our season card holders an email with an activation code, so they just need to click a link and fill in a few details.
“We would encourage as many to do that as possible ahead of them placing their renewal.
“We’ve created little help decks, so people can go online and find how to activate their account, how they can link friends and family to it, to just get the most out of it.
“Sometimes it can be easier to do things on your phone or on your laptop rather than come to the City Ground.
“But of course the ticket office is still here to help people with any issues they may have with that process.
“Nearly half of our season card holders have already activated their accounts, which is great.
“It’s been embraced, and I hope people are finding it a bit easier than the system was in the past because improving the fan experience in terms of being able to buy tickets has been a really key point on our agenda since we came in.”
Prices for season cards for 2020/21 start at £365 for adults and £35 for children under the age of 11.
Although the cost has gone up, Cook says Forest have done their best to make them as competitively priced as possible.
“There’s small increases across the board,” he said. “That’s due to rising costs - national minimum wage and labour costs going up.
“We’ve got a small increase just to cover those things.
“We’ve tried to keep it as competitive as we possibly can. We know how important it is and how challenging life can be in terms of cost of living.
“We’ve tried to stay as low as we possibly can with increases and take away as much pressure as we can from the fans.
“We still feel we’re competitive. We benchmark against what other clubs are doing.
“We see how challenging it can be for people, so we have a finance option which will allow people to use a direct debit payment method.
“We want as many people to be able to come to the stadium as possible and enjoy watching the games.”
There has been high demand for tickets to watch the Reds at the City Ground this term as Sabri Lamouchi’s men push for a place in the Premier League.
Saturday’s clash with QPR will be the fifth sell-out of the campaign.
And with the proposed Peter Taylor Stand redevelopment limiting capacity next season, Cook has stressed the importance of fans securing their seats.
“We just want to encourage fans to activate their account and renew during this window,” he added.
“We can’t say for certain whether there will be another round of season card sales.
“If everyone renews, it’s unlikely there will be.
“We’re really pleased with how it’s started, and as we move to the deadline day that will only ramp up.”
