How to Get Liverpool Tickets

For Liverpool fans, the best thing that they could possibly do is get to see their time live and in the flesh. This is also something that even a lot of non-Liverpool supporters would like to do, such is the allure of Anfield and the thrill of watching the most successful football club that England has ever produced plying its trade in person. The problem is, the demand for tickets far outweighs the ability of the club to be able to supply them, with Anfield being finite in terms of its size. Whilst the club is doing what it can to expand the number of people that are able to enter the stadium, it will always be limited in terms of getting people into it.

If Liverpool somehow managed to expand Anfield to 100,000, there would still be some matches in which there weren’t enough tickets for those that wish to go and watch the team play. That is the nature of being in demand, but it also helps to illustrate just how difficult getting hold of tickets can be. That, of course, is not much consolation to those that are hoping to go and see a Liverpool match live, but it should at least present you with a sense of the task in front of you. The good news is that there are ways of getting tickets to go to a game at Anfield, with budget usually being the only thing that will stop you.

Tickets from the Club

If you want to get a ticket for a Liverpool game then the best of doing so that guarantees that you’re not going to be fleeced by some nefarious character is to buy them directly from the club. There are around 30,000 season tickets in use at Anfield, but the demand for them is so high that the season ticket waiting list has been closed for years. In other words, the only way you’re going to be able to go to watch a Liverpool match on a season ticket is if you know someone who has one that is willing to lend one to you, otherwise it is something of a closed shop. There is an alternative to season tickets, though, which is the Membership.

Membership

You can buy a Membership for Liverpool from the club, with different levels of Membership available depending on what you’re hoping to get out of it. As you can probably imagine, each tier of Membership also costs differing amounts of money, which can be difficult to swallow when you consider that you don’t get a guarantee of tickets for even the most expensive level. That being said, Premium Members get access to late availability tickets before home games in the Premier League, which does at least provide a slight opportunity to get tickets at the last minute if you’re in the city for some reason when a game is on.

There are 13,000 tickets reserved for Members for each home game, with those that have signed up for Premium Membership, Full Membership and Light Membership getting access to the sales. There is normally one bulk sale in July and another in November, with Members being asked to express an interest in which games they’d like to go when the bulk sale occurs. They will then be entered into a ballot that will see the 13,000 tickets per game allotted to Members on a random basis. The exception to this is for some of the more popular matches, at which point requirements will be put in place regarding previous attendance.

It might be, for example, that you will need to have been to eight matches on your Membership the previous year in order to be included in the ballot for a match against Manchester United, say. Even if there is no such requirement in place, you are still going to be competing against huge numbers of people for the ability to get a ticket, so there is no guarantee that you will win one even if you enter the ballot for every single game that you are eligible for and have a Premium Membership. Whilst you do get certain things with your Membership, such as a scarf of a Member’s pin badge, it is still a lot of money to pay without any assurance that you’ll get a ticket for a game.

Hospitality

If money isn’t your major concern then one of the ways that you can put yourself into a position whereby you are more likely to be able to attend a match of your choosing is by opting for a hospitality package. Here is a look at the various hospitality areas inside Anfield:

• 1892 Lounge
• The Boot Room Restaurant
• Sevens Lounge
• Eights Lounge
• The Carlsberg Dugout – The Kop End
• The Carlsberg Dugout – The Anfield Road End
• The Chemistry Lounge
• The Beautiful Game
• The Reds Bar
• The Executive Lounge
• Centenary Club
• Premier Club

There are also hospitality packages available away from Anfield, such as the Isla Gladstone, the Crowne Plaza and the Sandon, with transportation to the ground included if necessary.

Regardless of which hospitality package you pick, you will get a ticket included in the cost of the package. Whilst this is obviously the best way of ensuring that you can get into the ground for a match, it is worth bearing in mind that it really is an expensive way to go about things. You will end up spending a decent amount of money on your hospitality package, so do make sure that it is something that you can afford to do before over-extending yourself. Some matches will be more expensive than others, whilst some matches will also offer greater opportunity to be able to get a hospitality package than others.

It is also worth pointing out that the cost of each package will differ, which is reflected both in terms of the overall experience that you’ll enjoy, the location of the seat when you’re inside the stadium and what you’ll get for you money in terms of the likes of food and drink. You should also bear in mind that some of the packages will mean that you’re expected to dress in a certain way, with replica shirts and the like not allowed. For the top-end packages, you’ll be asked to wear a shirt and tie if you identify as male, or a smart outfit if you identify as female. The exact requirements and what the package involves will be made clear when you buy.

Knowing Other Supporters

The reality is that getting a Liverpool ticket without paying through the nose for it can be something of a closed shop. The club has introduced a system known as Friends & Family, whereby you can add an unlimited number of people to your F&F list at the start of the season, allowing you to transfer a ticket to them if you have one. You don’t need to have a Membership to be on someone’s Friends & Family list, just have a Supporter ID number that is free to get. Obviously the problem might lie in being able to get on someone’s F&F list in the first place, but don’t underestimate the power of the likes of social media on that front.

It is far from impossible that you might know someone through the likes of Twitter that is willing to put you on their Friends & Family list, sending you a Liverpool ticket if they’re not going to a game simply because you’ve interacted with them a few times and been friendly with them on social media. Obviously it isn’t a guarantee, but if you’ve already got social media accounts and know some Liverpool fans on them, you might as well drop them a message and ask the question. If you haven’t yet created a Supporter ID, you can do so at any point during the season and add people to your Friends & Family list for a couple of weeks before it locks.

Tickets from Third-Party Sellers

Whilst it would be great if everyone was able to buy tickets directly from the club, the reality is that that simply isn’t always possible. Perhaps you didn’t manage to get a ticket for the game that you wanted to go to courtesy of the Members’ sale. Maybe there were no hospitality packages available for your chosen match to allow you to go that way. Regardless of the reason, you might find yourself in a position where you have to look elsewhere for Liverpool tickets and decide to turn to third-party vendors. There are some that are given official status by the club, which means that you can buy from them in a relative degree of comfort.

One way of doing this is by taking advantage of the club’s Official Match Day Breaks, which not only includes hospitality tickets for the game but also the likes of travel and a night’s accommodation. There are different companies that offer these sorts of breaks, with different areas inside Anfield specifically aimed at the Match Day Break packages. There is Brodies Sport Bar or the Founders Club Lounge, both of which are in the Anfield Road, for example. The Main Stand has The Anfield Beat Lounge and The Code Lounge, whilst the Kenny Dalglish Stand has The Reds Bar. The Village, meanwhile, is part of The Sandon pub outside Anfield.

There are also re-seller sites on which supporters that have a ticket for the match might sometimes sell their tickets in order to make a profit. This sort of practice is frowned upon by Liverpool supporters, with many feeling as though it is diluting the atmosphere. I’ll cover that in more detail shortly, but it is worth flagging it up. One thing that is worth saying is that you will almost certainly have to pay significantly more than the ticket is worth if you go through a re-seller site, so it might be worth exploring the cost of hospitality packages before then, given that you might end up spending less and getting more doing it that way.

Whilst a lot of regular match-going fans might not like the idea of re-seller sites, the reality is that a lot of people might not have any other choice but to go down that road if they wish to get tickets for a Liverpool match. There can be a lot of snobbery around it, but it isn’t exactly out of the realms of the possible for someone to have going to Anfield on their bucket list, say, or to have come over to England from Australia, New Zealand or Japan and know that they will only get one chance to go and see Liverpool play in the flesh. Quite how they’re expected to do that without buying tickets from the likes of a re-seller site I’m not sure.

What You Need to Think About

For as long as Liverpool has been a globally recognised football club, there has been a debate that has raged that looks to pitch locals against ‘out of towners’. The idea is that locals are somehow better and more deserving of tickets than those that come from further afield. This debate tends to flare up when the atmosphere isn’t good inside Anfield, especially if there are huge sums of people caught on camera taking photos with their phones or filming parts of the match. Personally, I think it is a load of nonsense. I have been going to Anfield off and on for decades and have never had an issue with so-called ‘tourists’.

There have been numerous occasions when I have been stood on the Kop and the people around me are all Scousers and have been going to the game for years, spend the entire match moaning and then head home on 85 minutes in order to beat the traffic. Equally, I have been stood next to people from foreign countries who have known all of the words to the songs and got right into the spirit of the match. That being said, there are obviously plenty of people who go to Liverpool games not because they care about the football, but because they want to have the experience once in their life. This might be you, but just bear in mind that if you stand there taking photos throughout and not joining in, someone might have a go at you.