Away fans visiting St Mary's Stadium this season will once again be benefiting from a £20 cap on away tickets at the south coast side thanks to Virgin Media and the Football Supporters Federation.

Virgin Media have confirmed that they will once again be subsidising every visiting fan Southampton by up to £10 - so no supporter seeing their side at St Mary's will pay more than £20. Offering a saving of more than £500,000 in total for travelling fans.

This goes above and beyond the Premier League wide £30 cap on away tickets with Watford fans being the latest to benefit from the subsidy, as they visit Southampton on Saturday.

John Fawell of Watford Supporters Trust said

"It's great that Watford fans have only had to pay a maximum of £20 for our away trip to Southampton this weekend.

"It's good to see the hard wprk campaigning on £20s Plenty is continuing to have an impact and hats off to Virgin Media for supporting it."

Supporter organisations at Watford, such as the Watford Supporters Trust and the 1881 Movement are big backers of the of the Twenty’s Plenty campaign.

Ali Shah from the 1881 Movement said:

"Thanks again to the FSF and Virgin Media for getting the ball rolling towards universal Twenty's Plenty at Southampton; a very welcome and important first step."

The Football Supporters Federation wants to see more clubs and sponsors take up the practice of subsidising away fans - even reaching out to Southampton to secure a £20 reciprocal deal. A practice that was common in the seasons before the introduction of the league-wide £30 cap.

Some Saints fans have been confused as to how this deal has been set up and have even complained that it is unfair that the rest of the Premier League have benefitted whilst Saints fans themselves are not.

This is a deal set up by the Football Supporters Federation alongside Virgin Media who are sponsors of both the FSF as well as Saints.

When they announced this last season it was natural that Saints should be selected as the club for the deal given that Virgin Media are our sponsors, last season Virgin Media made sure that Saints fans did not miss out by paying the £10 on at least two occasions when Saints played away as well as subsidising travel to games notably Manchester United.

They have also subsidised home tickets for Saints fans in not just the domestic cup competitions but the Europa League.

So Saints fans should not be confused, Virgin are involved in the Twenty's Plenty campaign as part of their sponsorship of the Football Supporters Federation rather than their involvement with us, this connection has enabled us to further enhance our own reputation due to this tie up and can only be positive.

But it is not coming out of the money that we receive from Virgin, it is a seperate entity.

Find out more about the work the Football Supporters Federation does by clicking the link below.

http://fsf.org.uk/

Photo: Action Images

simmo400 added 07:52 - Sep 10 For Saints fans it should be so much per effort on target. Queue up at the box office for your refunds on Monday.
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