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Brentford have launched their membership scheme giving fans loyalty points for attending matches.

Costing £10 to join, members of the scheme will receive priority to all-ticket matches where tickets are limited (both home and away) in accordance with the club’s customer charter.

Members will receive points for every single Brentford game they purchase in advance. The more points accumulated, the higher in the priority queue. The tickets must be bought via the Brentford ticket office at least one day prior to the match.

The exact points system is still to be finalised.

Apparently, members will also receive loyalty points for buying pies from the catering and stocking up with merchandise from the club shop – “PieGate”. That’s something we’re not too sure about to be totally honest. We can see why the club are doing it of course but really think this is a bit of cheap way of trying to boost additional revenues. (See below).

Maybe fans are OK with the idea of merch and food boosting their points. It might be a worthwhile exercise the club asking the supporters.

Members will receive a £1 discount to home matches if purchased in advance.

The pecking order will see club members come after:

season ticket holders and junior Bees

but in front of

fans on the club database, BIAS, Goalden Gate lottery, Lifeline, Beesworld subscribers and Brentford community trust members

when limited-ticket match tickets are released to the public for sale.

Bees United, Brentford FC trust (and junior bees presumably) receive automatic membership to the membership scheme for this coming season.

Season ticket holders receive complimentary membership of the scheme every year.

£1 refunds are available to fans purchasing Sheffield Utd and Walsall tickets who sign up to the scheme.

Loyalty points will not be available for the Port Vale away game as the home team did not send any tickets down (see below).

Fans can sign up to the membership scheme online

Beesotted are very much for a well ironed out and fair membership scheme. We wrote a piece on a potential membership scheme around the time of the Chelsea game and wrote to the club with our ideas, offerering them the chance to debate ideas before putting a scheme into place – getting the fans involved and getting their thoughts – but are still awaiting a reply.

Analysing the scheme in place, we have a few questions that hopefully the club will be able to answer in due course.

1. Will the loyalty points roll on infinitely or do they expire? If they expire, after how long? It is usual for a points accumulated in one year to carrying rolling on the next year but them expire two or even three years later.

If my friend moved into a house in Brentford from living in say the USA in 2016 and decided he wanted to start supporting the local team – going to a fair few home and away matches that season, he would find myself at an unfair disadvantage if there were people with three years of loyalty points accumulated that he had to ‘compete’ against. He could never catch up

One of the key issues with any scheme that we highlighted in our membership article was always ensuring that the scheme was accessible. People should always feel that they had a chance to get on the ladder and compete eventually for tickets.

2. From experience, with loyalty schemes (eg the england caps scheme), people are profoundly proud of their loyalty points in terms of games attended. Brentford really should not underestimate this. It’s an important statement of the commitment made to support your team. It’s the single-most point of contention (how caps are allocated) within the whole EnglandFans scheme.

EnglandFans even sporadically publish league tables of ‘top cappers’ to highlight the fans with the highest loyalty points. Why ruin a very simple idea and focus by adding loyalty points for buying catering and merchandise? It muddies the concept.

I can imagine a conversation in The Griffin.

“I’ve got top priority to the Man U game. I’ve got 30 loyalty points. Been to all the home games and 10 away games this season”.

“I’ve got top priority too. 35 loyalty points. I’ve been to just five home games, one away game. But I’ve eaten 6 burgers, four packet of crisps, 20 pints of beer and bought my whole family of 10 Brentford mugs and wooly jumpers for Xmas”

PieGate

Personally, we at Beesotted strongly feel that points for merchandise and catering shouldn’t be included in the loyalty points scheme. It should be strictly be about match attendance. If anything,the club should use people signed up to the scheme to encourage them to buy more merchandise and catering by clever promotions and discounts. That will then give the scheme added value.

3. If I have a season ticket this year, does that automatically give me say 23 loyalty points (1 for each home game) regardless of whether I attend or not … on top of my away points? I would presume so as I will have paid for those matches.

If next season I decided not to get a season ticket, presumably those 23 points will stay on my account for the next season.

3. There will be no loyalty points available for Port Vale away. Early signs indicate that there will be more fans at Port Vale than at Tranmere or Bradford. These fans shouldn’t be punished because the system isn’t quite up and running. We suggest Brentford asks fans who go to this game to keep their ticket stubs and send them into Brentford to add their loyalty points to the scheme retrospectively.

4. It is unclear if the points system will be broken down for home games and away games. Will there be different points given for home and away games (eg 1 point for home, 2 points for away)? And is the scheme suggesting that ONLY away points accumulated will go specifically towards the one or two away games with a limited away capacity (eg Crawley)

Fans may have questions about the membership scheme. If so tweet @beesotted or email beesotted1992(at)gmail.com and we will ask the question.

BillytheBee
@billythebee99