Which teams still only sell match tickets to members?
Manchester United and Arsenal fall into this category while Liverpool sell memberships then newer members find they still can't get tickets any tickets at all as they don't have enough loyalty points. Rare general sales are restricted to those with L postcodes.
I suspect there must be many other clubs in the Premier League doing similar things.
Membership cards are, in my view, a rip off and an anachronism harking back to the days of Margaret Thatcher and David Evans.
So I am coming at this from a Cardiff point of view, where home tickets do go on general sale eventually if they don't sell out beforehand, but away games are essentially members only.
If it also applied to home games then my opinion would probably be a bit different. But for the way we do it:
Home games where members get priority over general sale means that longer term fans get priority. If Cardiff put all games on general sale at the sale time as the club members could buy them, then many of those members who have supported the club in the lower leagues too wouldn't be able to get tickets.
And as for postcodes, I agree it is a difficult one (I am a Cardiff fan who may well have a Bristol postcode soon, so that may be fun!) but at the same time making sure away fans don't just buy tickets in the home end is a pretty important thing as not only does it take away tickets from actual home fans but it leads to the potential for issues like what happened at Cardiff during the Man Utd match where a Utd fan got chased out of the ground for celebrating one of the goals.
For loyalty points, we aren't popular enough for that to come into home tickets, but certainly for away tickets it makes perfect sense. Does my dad who makes it to more away games warrant getting priority over me who makes less? Of course he does! As for newer members not being able to get enough points, I don't buy that excuse. We've had some Cardiff fans try to use that to complain about away ticket priorities, yet there have been quite a few games where away tickets have gone on sale to just normal members with no previous away games - the problem is those are the less popular games so they don't want to go to them!
As for them being a rip off? I guess it depends. For me I'd say £25 for priority over general sale and the ability to buy away tickets? Why not! But then again I have my season ticket mainly because of ticket priority these days as I probably don't actually save any money due to games I miss!