Attendance of basketball matches at the Palau for the 2010/11 season was an average of 3,790 a game, which was 11% down on the previous season. Although more tickets were available (Seient Lliure increased by 28%), the Palau often looked rather empty for some games. One of the reasons for this, as explained by the manager of the other sports sections, Joan Carles Raventós, is that a group of some 2,000 season ticket holders (45% of the total) don’t even go to the Palau or free their seats.

Basketball: ‘Full Palau’ season tickets

To encourage attendance at the Palau, the Club has developed a series of actions. The first is to reward the loyalty of season ticket holders by means of the ‘Palau Ple’ or ‘Full Palau’ system. This programme involves material and emotional prizes for a total of 1,192 people, who are those season ticket holders that attended or freed their seats for all games in the season (with a margin of five games a year). The most important advantages include several draws for tickets for finals, the chance to appear in the official team photograph, attendance of an exclusive training session, and draws for different merchandising items. Other basketball supporters that would like to enjoy the different privileges of the ‘Palau Ple’ programme can do so if they attend or free their seats for all games in the 2012/13 season.

The remaining basketball season ticket holders continue enjoying the same benefits as ever. The Club will be setting up promotions and actions to provide a greater incentive to come to more games at the Palau.

Cards for each sport

Laurent Colette, director of Marketing and Exploitation, explained that also for the 2011/12 season, the complete Palau season ticket, which guaranteed a seat for all four professional sports teams, will no longer be sold. The main reason for doing this is that a large percentage of people with these cards do not attend all of the matches they could. And this makes it difficult to sell these seats on days where demand is high and also to organise specific promotions for special groups.

Friend of handball, futsal of roller hockey card

To cater for such demand and increase attendance of games played by the other sports teams, there is a new proposal, namely specific season tickets for each particular sport, which can also be purchased by other fans, even if they are not members. So the new options are the Friend of handball, Friend of futsal and Friend of roller hockey cards, which offer a permanent seat in the Palau for all games in your chosen sport. This also means that this seat will still be available for people who want to watch a different sport.

These cards cost non-members 70 euros for futsal and handball (60 for members) and 50 for roller hockey (40 euros for members). Basketball season ticket holders get a 25% discount on season tickets for any other sport.

Apart from this, FC Barcelona members can still access all handball, futsal and roller hockey games in the Palau for free, although they do not have a specifically allocated seat.