Nothing compares to collecting ticket stubs season after season to document each game attended, but the practice has undergone significant shifts over the decades.
A match ticket is not only significant for entry into a stadium, but it also serves a purpose as a collectable – and with Liverpool’s history, supporters are not short on stubs to the biggest games.
With technological advancements, though, those treasured paper tickets have been swapped out for an NFC pass that loads onto your phone and disappears as quickly as it came.
It takes away any possibility of nostalgia and the chance to look back in 50 years on this era, just as we do now for the ’60s, ’70s and beyond.
But unlike present day, where every fan gets a ‘ticket’, in the past games only saw tickets issued for specific seating areas – meaning only a few thousand were printed.
The majority of spectators would be in standing sections and at that time fans would pay at the gate, negating a need for a ticket. That so few were printed makes them all the more valuable.
What is interesting is seeing how tickets have changed over the decades, in terms of shape, size, colour, and everything in between.
Matches were not always all-ticketed
Unlike matchday programmes, which have existed since the club’s inception and remain treasured possessions, ticket stubs are relatively ‘new’ in comparison.
There was previously no uniformity to the process, some would have the club’s name and logo etched into the background and others had a simple plain backing, while some would be a lot bigger than others.
There were also transitions between a paper ticket and those made of card – as you can imagine, the paper ones required a little more care if you wanted to hold on to it safely!
The two pictured above from the early 1960s show the ticket on a coloured background but with very little detail beyond that, except for the crest that may feel more familiar to one of our closest rivals.
It has all the key details you would need or want, though.
Even a few years later you can see (below) how the stubs evolved, with the club crest becoming part of the background towards the later stages of the 1960s.
Imagine the stories these stubs could tell!
Into the 1970s and ’80s…
The 1970s and ’80s were a golden age in the history of Liverpool Football Club, with 24 major trophies won domestically and across Europe.
At Anfield, there was a bit more creativity starting to emerge on the ticket front with new background designs in the early ’70s.
In the image above, we can see the ticket with green and red-shaped triangles, but throughout the decade yellow and pink were also used.
We can see that with a special ticket that admitted entrance to the Directors’ refreshment room against Everton in 1979 (below).
As Liverpool’s European adventures have been a constant in the club’s history, it is only right we take a closer look at those tickets.
We’ll start (below) in 1965, with this ticket issued for a European Cup semi-final first leg against Internazionale (Inter Milan) on May 4.
As per LFCHistory, it was a new style of ticket having been much larger than what was previously produced by the club – as they had only been for ticketed areas they are now hard to find.
Moreover, LFCHistory explain this ticket (below), from the first leg of the 1973 UEFA Cup Final, is one rarely seen as the match initially took place in extreme wet weather and was abandoned after 27 minutes.
The game was originally scheduled for May 9 but actually took place in its entirety the following day.
As it was printed on flimsy, thin paper it is somewhat miraculous that any survived.
In the late 1970s, the club went back to printing on paper and changed how a ticket was retained – with the stub left with the supporter while the club took the main portion of the ticket.
They were clearly not thinking about longevity or historical pieces, such as this one!
Just look at that European Cup final ticket in 1978 (left, above), it cost £2.50, which in today’s prices would be less than £16. You’d be lucky to even get in the vicinity of the stadium for that price now!
You can see the evolution but it was not really until 1985/86 that tickets at Anfield changed in appearance, transforming into a landscape version that many regulars from the 1990s and 2000s will know all too well.
The previous versions were still used throughout the remainder of the decade but a noticeable shift had started to offer a glimpse at what was to come.
The huge shift of the 1990s…
Aside from the price of a ticket slowly rising, you will have also noticed the appearance of club sponsors start to make their presence known on the stubs.
The 1990s was a decade that saw English football become heavily commercialised as the Premier League was formed amid the rapid globalisation of the sport – and tickets would change drastically.
In the image above, you can see the first introduction of club sponsor Carlsberg on a Liverpool ticket stub – it is the longest partnership in the Premier League and club history.
The club then dabbled in foil printing, giving tickets a shiny look, as seen on this ticket in 1993 (below).
In 1996/97, we saw Reebok become the Reds’ kit supplier and, in turn, they became the second sponsor on a ticket stub – that was prime real estate!
This (below) is an example of what a ‘full’ ticket looked like in 1998 before the supporter handed over the tear-off on entry at Anfield.
The final year of the ’90s had one last transformation in store, with the modernised club crest making its first appearance as Liverpool prepared to enter the new millennium.
You can also see (above) that extra design detail was added, with ‘Liverpool Football Club’ in curved writing – which continued into the 2000s.
The 2000s on…
The excitement of heading to the ticket office or seeing the small rectangular envelope fall from the letterbox is unmatched, refreshing an NFC pass cannot, and will never, compare.
For those who were lucky enough to get tickets throughout the 2000s and 2010s, these tickets will be quite familiar to you!
The price of a ticket is the obvious change, but there were also plenty of design tweaks – from background and colour choices to, of course, club sponsors.
The club dabbled in background images, borders and varied up how they presented ‘Liverpool’ on the ticket – changing almost as often as the kits did!
And this (below) is a great example of that, only 10 months separate the two tickets and yet they look like they are from different eras entirely.
Often different ticket designs were in circulation at the same time, but the rapid nature of their changes made for special tokens of going to the match.
Just look at the four tickets pictured below, they cover only less than four years!
Season tickets and member cards would negate the need for everyone to have tickets at Anfield, but below we can see what many will remember as when transition away from paper stubs began.
Liverpool definitely became experts at sponsorship placements!
The 2000s were certainly transformational and we did not know it at the time, but it would be the last era of ticket collecting as we knew it.
The digital world
In 2019, Liverpool started rolling out near-field communication (NFC) technology, first in their hospitality sections before rolling it out throughout Anfield in 2021.
It is a pass you download on your mobile phone and it is updated for each game a fan attends, no longevity or possibility for nostalgia is there?
You can screenshot your device, but the image then just gets lost in the void of photos on your phone. The younger generations coming through are missing out.
They are definitely easier to keep safe, but if this journey has shown us anything, it is that there will always be something special and nostalgic about a printed ticket.
Images sourced via the incredible LFCHistory.net.
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