Our intention had always been to speak to Bury before tickets went on sale, both about the size of their allocation and how they wanted the tickets to be sold and prioritised.
As part of our normal pre-season set-up, we upload tickets for all of our home fixtures onto Fanbase and make them available for sale. The Bury fixture should have been excluded from that process until we’d spoken to them, but unfortunately it wasn’t, which meant the standard away allocation was also made available for purchase.
This was an operational oversight on our part, and we’re sorry.
By the time Bury contacted us on Tuesday, some of their supporters had already found and purchased tickets via Fanbase. Bury asked us to confirm whether it was ok for fans to buy these tickets and for them to promote the ticket link and, given that tickets were already on sale and had been purchased, we agreed. The allocation then sold out very quickly.
We had already started looking at whether we could change the segregation arrangements at Broadhurst Park to give Bury a larger allocation. That work is continuing and we’re hopeful that we may be able to make additional tickets available, although we can’t confirm that until the safety and operational arrangements have been properly assessed.
If we can increase the allocation, we’ll work with Bury before any additional tickets go on sale so that they can decide how they want those tickets to be prioritised.
Boxing Day has all the ingredients to be one of the standout occasions of the season – two fan-owned clubs, a big crowd and what should be a fantastic atmosphere at Broadhurst Park. We want it to be a real celebration of fan-owned football and a great day for both sets of supporters.
We’ve written directly to Bury FC to apologise, and we’re particularly sorry to those Bury supporters who missed out on tickets because we didn’t get the initial arrangements right.
We’ll now work with Bury to see whether we can increase their allocation and make Boxing Day the occasion it should be.