Town and Villa in Ticket Talks - Ipswich Town News
Town are in talks with Aston Villa regarding further tickets for the FA Cup third round tie at Villa Park on Saturday 5th January. The Blues’ initial allocation of 2,900 sold out this morning soon after going on general sale, most having been purchased via the usual priority scheme.
In the FA Cup away sides are permitted to take 15 per cent of the tickets, however, Villa only made 2,900 available on a sale or return basis, a common practice in these circumstances.
Ticket office manager John Ford says he is speaking to the Premier League side, who will play a Capital One Cup semi-final only a few days after the Town match, regarding additional seats: "We could have taken 15 per cent [over 6,000 seats] of the stadium capacity, but we would have had to pay for all of those tickets regardless of whether we sold them or not.
"Our current average travelling support is 646 and we had much less than that, 419 to be precise, who went to Leeds on Saturday and this is one of the factors we based our decision on.
"It would have been naive of us to look at taking 6,000 tickets and risk being considerably out of pocket so we took the maximum we could at sale or return.
"Season ticket holders and Silver Club members had until yesterday to purchase their tickets and there were steady sales throughout this period. The remaining tickets went on general sale with the last 200 going in 35 minutes this morning.
"We have spoken to Aston Villa and they have been impressed that we have sold out so quickly.
"We have asked if they will consider providing us with more tickets but that will be dependent on their stadium configuration as they have been selling tickets for the game for two weeks.”
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