With their remainder of the 2025/26 season being sold out, Lincoln City are allowing fans the chance to be at games with a ticket buyback scheme.
First launched in November 2018 – the scheme encourages Gold Season Members who can’t attend games to put their ticket up for resale.
This will then allow a fan to purchase the ticket, and the member will receive a small commission if their seat is sold, with adults receiving £11.
To do this, members must use their We Are Imps account, with the deadline of a ticket being sold being 1pm on the day of the game.
Members will already receive priority windows and have earlier access to tickets – with Gold Members having a guaranteed seat at every home match.
Many other clubs across England’s top four leagues (Premier League – Sky Bet League Two) have implemented a similar system in order for people to make sure that they’re at the game when others can’t be.
In the Premier League, teams including Leeds United and Nottingham Forrest have brought in their own club Ticket Exchange schemes.
The scheme sees a season ticket holder sell their ticket back to the club on a match-by-match basis, the same as at the Imps.
In the EFL Championship, there are different ways that clubs have gone around doing this and implementing a scheme similar to that at the LNER Stadium.
Birmingham City have a ticket forwarding system, open two weeks prior to the game where fans can pass on their ticket virtually to another fan – but receive no monetary incentive to do so.
However, at clubs like West Bromwich Albion, Oxford United and Coventry City, the scheme works in the same vein as City.
And across the two bottom divisions of league football, the scheme has been rolled out similar to Lincoln’s back in November 2018.
However, people in and out of clubs are still concerned about fake tickets, and ticket touting occurring.
In 2019, approximately 1.9 million tickets for football games were sold on secondary platforms, with touting being banned by the UK Government in 2025.
This then makes these ticket exchange, and forwarding systems all that more efficient and worthwhile for clubs and supporters because they know that they are getting the “real deal” when it comes to seeing their club in action.