SHREWSBURY TOWN chairman Roland Wycherley has slammed Wolves for setting low ticket prices for their FA Cup clash.
Wolves have adjusted their ticket price, usually ranging from £32 to £71 for a Premier League game, to just £10 for adults and £5 for concessions.
But Shrewsbury chairman Wycherley is upset at the meagre prices, claiming his lower-league side won’t get rewarded financially.
He said: “The FA take 10 per cent, then the stewarding and policing costs come out, the VAT gets paid and the two clubs split what’s left between them.
“The pricing belittles the competition and is disrespectful to the visiting club. They’ve already stopped replays and when the FA introduced the £10 10 years ago, it was as a minimum and not a maximum.”
Shrewsbury, who have missed out on the FA Cup third round only twice in the past decade, have faced a similar situation in the past.
Takeover talk
Mike Ashley in three-horse Sheffield Wednesday race as final bids revealed
Welcome offer
Get a £50 welcome bonus when you join Sun Vegas and spend £10
In 2020, they held Liverpool to a draw at home and believed they had landed a bumper pay day for the replay at Anfield.
Instead, Liverpool decided to rest their first team players and field their youngest-ever starting line-up which reduced admission prices.
Wycherley believes it cost his club as much as £500,000.
“We’ll end up making more from our match at South Shields in the first round,” he added.
“We’ve written to Wolves to say we strongly disagree but what can we do?
“Yet again, the lower league club gets shafted. It’s not our fault Wolves are reducing prices because the fans are up in arms about their owners.”
In response, Wolves claimed “as the home club we have to act in the best interests of our supporters and that has guided the pricing for this game”.
Wycherley bought Shrewsbury Town in July 1996 with the club £750,000 in debt.
Under his ownership, the club endured relegation to the Conference in 2003 before an immediate bounce back.
The Shrews moved to their 10,000-seater New Meadow stadium in 2007.
Wycherley was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for his services to the community in Shrewsbury.
Read the full article here
