The papers are starting their usual close season crusade against high ticket prices, but I was thinking how the cost never enters my mind if we win. If we lose though, especially against some awful team on a freezing cold, wet Tuesday night I feel like breaking down the dressing room door and demanding the players shove their hands into their bulging wallets and give me a refund personally.

So I started thinking about how you could charge different amounts depending on the performance, so if the team don’t bother turning up you get charged less and don’t feel quite as bad.

Then it hit me – betting. If you put a bet on the opposition winning, you’d get some money back, and the odds would reflect how disappointing the loss was. You wouldn’t get much money back if you lost to Man U or Arsenal, but you wouldn’t have expected to win anyway so the disappointment isn’t so great. But suffer the ignominy of defeat against the likes of Sutton United and you’d get a lot more back.

Clubs now have official suppliers for every conceivable item, including bookmakers, so why not ask them to pay for a small wager on the opposition winning to be included on every ticket as part of the deal?

I’m sure at this point most of you are thinking I’ve gone completely mad, but hear me out.

The first thing that hits you is the seeming negativity of it. Betting on the opposition winning? Are the club expecting to lose? Put a bit of spin on it though and it becomes an insurance policy provided by the club because they care about the supporters and want to make sure they get their moneys worth. ‘POINTS OR YOUR MONEY BACK (well, some of it at least)’.

Some might say that it creates a conflict – fans might want the team to lose to get the money. But ask yourself this, would you prefer to see the team win and pay the full price, or lose and get a fiver back? I know which I’d choose.

It’d have a lot of other positive effects too, for the club and the fans. The club coffers would benefit as attendances would increase, especially against less glamorous opposition, because the fans would know they’re going to get something out of the game no matter what. More fans = better atmosphere = more intimidated opposition = greater chance of victory. A winning team gets more supporters, and so a vicious winning cycle begins.

Should the unthinkable happen and the team lose, making the wager redeemable at the club shops in exchange for tickets would help maintain attendance levels after losses as the ticket for the next game would work out cheaper, enticing people to come back. It’d also mean kids and people who don’t like betting could take advantage, as it’d be a discount voucher rather than a betting slip. And the best thing is it’ll have hardly cost the club a penny, if anything at all, to give the fans this discount to keep them sweet.

Season tickets need to be considered because the ‘odds’ won’t be set when they get their tickets, but that could easily be sorted with a single voucher which can be reclaimed at the end of the season against a new season ticket. The cost of renewing is reduced so more people will. The ticket system could be set up so that the ‘refund’ is automatically added to the ‘cashless card’ for those who have one, so they don’t even need to worry about losing the voucher.

The system would need to take into account a few other details, like making sure concessions/complimentary get less/no discount, and the ticket staff would need training to make sure they only accepted correct vouchers and gave the correct discount, but these are all technical issues which could be sorted relatively easily I reckon.