5 (five) loyalty points for Middlesbrough away

Middlesbrough away in the FA Cup has to rank as one of the most unattractive Brighton games of the Amex Era… which naturally means the Albion have decided to reward fans who make the journey with a grand total of 5 (five) loyalty points.

From Brighton to the Riverside Stadium is a 626 mile round trip. The game takes place two weeks after Christmas. In a cost-of-living crisis. With a rail strike meaning there are no trains. And those who travel do so in the knowledge that they will probably be watching a second-string Albion XI.

Those making the journey to Middlesbrough are the most loyal of the loyal. They deserve the Albion to shower them with 100 loyalty points, not the bare minimum of five.

Presumably the club’s thinking is that at £20 a ticket, hundreds of fans might purchase with no intention of turning up just to collect 15 loyalty points had the maximum been on offer.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you will know that a clampdown on points harvesting has been underway since October.

Brighton have reason to believe that a number of fans buy tickets for away games they have no intention of going to, which they then pass onto others who should not be there themselves.

The buyer subsequently gets rewarded for their loyalty even if they are not attending, keeping them towards the top of the tree when it comes to getting tickets for in-demand away games like Brentford or Fulham.

Whoever receives the ticket has a seat to a game they perhaps have no right to be at. Some of these people then go onto cause trouble at matches, with the club reporting that every single arrest made at a Brighton away game in the 2021-22 season was by somebody who should not have had a ticket.

And if said game sells out, then somebody else further down the loyalty points pecking order misses out on a ticket themselves to a potential non-Albion fan or troublemaker.

To combat this, random ticket collections and ID checks have been in place from the 2-0 defeat at Brentford onwards. Which, whilst inconvenient, is doing its bit to protect the integrity of the loyalty points system.

But deliberately downgrading a game only the most loyal fans will attend makes a mockery of the loyalty points system anyway.

The message it sends out is that Brighton are more interested in preventing harvesting than they are in rewarding fans taking the time and spending the money to travel more than 600 miles and support the Albion.

When Brighton won 1-0 away at Middlesbrough in the fourth round of the 2017-18 FA Cup, 887 Albion fans made the trip.

That game took place at the end of January. There were trains running to and from Middlesbrough. And it was a time when people were not considering selling a body part just to heat their home or afford a weekly shop.

For that many Brighton supporters to return to the Riverside Stadium this time around seems unlikely. Of an initial allocation of around 1000, the Albion have sold a little under 350 tickets so far with sales open to every season ticket holder.

The club have sent staff to check IDs and hand out tickets for collection to sold out allocations of 3000 in the Premier League.

If they are willing to go to that expense and effort, it is surely not much of a stretch to check on the turnstiles who the 500 souls mad enough to attend Middlesbrough away actually are and reward them for their staggering loyalty?

Every communication from of the club for the past three months in response to criticism of the new away ticketing system has been that it is necessary to protect loyal fans.

Those claims suddenly look hollow when, rather than put in the work to reward supporters attending a frankly dire FA Cup draw away from home in Middlesbrough, Brighton instead offer a pathetic five loyalty points.

The lack of willingness to police ticket buying for Middlesbrough in order to properly reward fans – in contrast to the measures taken in finding transgressions at league matches – creates the impression the Albion would rather catch and slap 10 game bans on people than acknowledging the most committed of supporters.

Preventing harvesting is all well and good, but the loyalty system is equally undermined when it awards three times the points for a 328 mile round trip to Leicester City in the Premier League as it does for covering more than 600 miles to Championship Boro in the FA Cup.

Hopefully, the Albion have a rethink before kick off at the Riverside Stadium and gives those with the commitment to find a way to Middlesbrough the points they deserve.