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Tottenham Hotspur have announced that their last home match of the season will feature the largest number of fans in attendance since the shutdown of football at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but fans are still vocally voicing their displeasure.
The club announced that the match against Aston Villa on May 15 will welcome 10,000 supporters inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with kick-off at 6 pm BST, 1 pm ET.
We are delighted to confirm our plans to welcome 10,000 fans back to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for our final home Premier League match of the season against Aston Villa on Wednesday 19 May, 6pm KO.#THFC ⚪️ #COYS
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) May 6, 2021
After more than a year without fans in attendance (barring a couple of matches with just a few thousand fans before the variant-fueled third wave), this should be unquestionably good and exciting news. The South Stand and parts of the East, North, and West stands will be opened for fans, with a ticket lottery in place for season ticket holders, Premium Spurs members, and other stakeholders.
However, the club’s decision to charge £60 per adult ticket for any seat throughout the stadium is causing a significant amount of dissatisfaction among Spurs fans on social media, the argument being that the amount charged is higher than other comparable tickets at other stadiums across the league.
As an American supporter who doesn’t attend matches, I don’t have a take on whether or not the ticket pricing is fair or not, but it does appear to be high and the backlash over ticket pricing is no doubt exacerbated with fan exasperation over the club’s recent decisions, including the disastrous attempt to join with the other Big Six to join the Super League. It does feel like this is a bit of a shot to the foot, considering an easy way to garner some good will would have been to price tickets on the low side for a mid-week match against Aston Villa.
It’s a shame that this is already overshadowing what should be a cause for celebration — fans back in the stadium is a good thing! But in this period of extreme dissatisfaction between football fans and corporate owners, instead it’s just another example of how that disconnect is continuing to grow.