General Sale

The cheapest method of buying football tickets for games is from General Sale. These are tickets purchased directly from the team and all you need to purchase them is a ticket account. When you go to the ticket website for a club, the available games announced for sale will have a list of dates when various tiers of members will be able to buy tickets, along with the date and time that the tickets will go on general sale.

Most Championship, League One, and League Two teams will have tickets reliably reach General Sale, and even some Premier League teams, too. Of the 14 matches we attended, nine of them were purchased through General Sale, including Aston Villa and West Ham. The key with those games is to purchase the tickets as soon as they’re available, as they can sell out quickly. 

Once I identified the teams we were going to see, I created a ticket account and linked my account to the other ticket accounts of my companions. That allowed me to purchase the tickets for everyone. Some teams with lower demand will allow one account to buy several tickets, but most teams require each ticket to be assigned to a unique individual.

The best way to determine whether or not a team will have tickets reach General Sale is to mock buying tickets to games prior to the game you want to attend. If the club consistently has available tickets after that General Sale date, you should be in good shape. The main caveat to this is if the upcoming game is against a rival, teams with fans that travel well, or games at the very beginning or very end of the season. For example, Plymouth Argyle consistently had tickets reach General Sale, but for their game against Leicester City, they put a restriction that didn’t allow any ticket accounts opened for less than a year to buy General Sale, despite tickets being available. This was to prevent away fans from buying these tickets.

Overall, as long as you’re open to games outside of the Premier League (and you absolutely should, there are incredible environments all across the Football League!) you can rely on getting tickets through General Sale and be really happy at the money you’re spending for a game. But we were able to buy Premier League tickets, too, using this method. Because I didn't want to miss out on a single game, I would wake up early in the morning to buy tickets right away, but for most teams in the Championship and League One, tickets were available for a while after being released.