Pay What You Want, or Pay What You Can, tends to be a Non-League affair in England although it has been done at Brentford in the past and also at Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the Scottish Premiership.
The initiative perhaps lends itself to people paying cash at a turnstile or gate rather than buying tickets in advance but that shouldn’t stop a pat on the back to Crawley Town for trying it out when Hartlepool United visit the Checkatrade Stadium for a League Two fixture on Saturday 17th January.
A minimum price of £1 has been set and all areas of the stadium are available apart from those held by season ticket holders.
Tickets can be purchased in advance at the box office or by phone and turnstiles will be open on the day for both home and away supporters to pay what they can.
Operations Director Kelly Derham told the official Crawley Town website: “We are delighted to be staging our first Pay What You Can game.
“January is traditionally a time when money is tight for everyone. The Hartlepool game is one of three fixtures in the month with Portsmouth the following week arguably our most attractive home game of the season.”
As I have written before on the blog, smaller clubs in Leagues One and Two face testing times as they balance the demands of maintaining full-time squads and the associated costs that come with that against a trend whereby the Championship is increasingly looking like a Premier League 2.
That task may be even harder for clubs such as Crawley who have risen so far in the past ten years but who are now looking to maintain their Football League place against a backdrop of attendances that have dipped below 2,000 at times this season.
Let's hope the 'Pay What You Can' offer can boost those numbers in January and increase awareness in the town of the efforts that the local club are making.
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