How to win football tickets
Do you love football? And if you’re not a fan yourself, maybe you have a family member who does?
In the UK there are usually plenty of prize promotions to win Premier League tickets and EFL (English Football League) tickets – plus opportunities for children to be mascots at Cup Finals, Playoff Finals and Champions League games. Every four years there’s also chances to win tickets and holidays to the UEFA European Championship and the World Cup!
Tickets to footy matches are super expensive, but my son and I regularly go and see our local team Brighton & Hove Albion for free, thanks to competition wins. Ryland has been a mascot for Arsenal at the FA Cup Final and also for Barcelona in the Champions League. I’ve presented a Man of the Match Award at Nottingham Forest – and also presented one to Kyle Walker at the England v Wales match at Euro 2016. One of my favourite footy prizes was seeing my beloved Birmingham City beat Arsenal in the League Cup Final – although unsurprisingly, my Gooner husband Rob still doesn’t like to talk about that day…
I love football, and I’m always looking out for chances to win – so I’ll be regularly updating this blog post with tips and details of the latest UK competitions to win match tickets!
My current recommended comps to win tickets:
Buy one product then enter these two comps EVERY DAY for the best chance of a win:
- Budweiser – buy a Bud and enter at www.budweiserpl.com – there are 380 pairs of Premier League tickets to be won instantly, and it ends 31 May 2022.
- Cadbury Match & Win – buy a Cadbury product and enter the barcode and batch code at matchandwin.cadburyfc.com after 23 August. There are 60 prizes of a pair of Premier League tickets to be won every week until 17 November 2021.
Carabao are giving away hundreds of pairs of tickets to Carabao Cup matches – keep an eye on the competition page at https://drinkcarabao.co.uk/pages/win for your chance to win!
First of all though, here’s my tips on how to find those ticket competitions. Your best bet is to find and follow all the sponsors connected to the League, Club or Competition you’d like to win tickets for. You’ll have the best chance of winning in the effort-based competitions (for example upload a photo, or where you need to buy a product), or last-minute comps for tickets where you’re not given much time to enter!
Check sponsor websites and social media
Club sponsors
If your preferred football club has sponsors, find and follow them on all their social media channels. Of course there’s the shirt sponsor and the stadium sponsor, but also check in the programmes for the matchball sponsor – and when you’re at a match, check the hoardings around the stadium for business names. These local sponsors may be giving away tickets during the season! American Express are sponsors of Brighton, and I won hospitality tickets to see Brighton Ladies via @AMEXUK on Twitter. I’ve won tickets to the 2022 EFL Cup Final with Carabao, the FA Cup Final thanks to Emirates and the 2020 EFL Trophy Final thanks to Leasing.com (unfortunately that one was during the pandemic with no fans so we missed out!)
- Find a list of current Premier League shirt sponsors on Wikipedia
National team sponsors
Brand partners linked to the ENGLAND national team are: Barclays, Boots, Bud Light, Deliveroo, Dettol, Disney, Google Cloud, LG, Lucozade, McDonalds, Nationwide, Panini, PayPal, Pokémon, Snickers and Weetabix – look out for ticket competitions from all these brands!
Cup sponsors
- FA Cup sponsor is Emirates (follow the Emirates FA Cup Facebook page for giveaways)
- Women’s FA Cup sponsor is Vitality (follow them on Facebook at Vitality UK & @VitalityUK on Twitter)
- EFL Cup sponsor is Carabao (follow them on Facebook at Carabao Cup & @CarabaoUK on Twitter)
- EFL Trophy is sponsored by Papa Johns (follow them on Facebook at Papa John’s & @PapaJohnsUK on Twitter)
- FA Trophy & FA Vase are sponsored by Buildbase (@BuildbaseUK & Buildbase Facebook page)
Premier League sponsors
- Budweiser – Bud frequently run on-pack promotions to win tickets, and for the 21/22 promotion you need to ‘scan’ your Budweiser with your phone camera at budweiserpl.com/ to see if you’ve instantly won one of 380 pairs of prize Premier League match tickets.
- Barclays – Barclays do regular giveaways for tickets to Premier League and also Women’s Super League matches on the Barclays Football Facebook page – and in previous seasons, Barclays customers can enter weekly ticket prize draws on their mobile app
- EA Sports – EA have previously given away PL season tickets in prize draws if you purchase their FIFA games, and also do ticket giveaways on their @ElectronicArts Twitter account
- Coca-Cola – look out for on-pack promotions to win tickets with Coke.
Other PL sponsors are Nike, Hublot, Avery Dennison and Panini
Cadbury
- Cadbury are no longer a Premier League sponsor, but are linked with many PL and EFL clubs. Look out for Match and Win, Cadbury Legends and on-pack instant win ‘golden ticket’ promotions for the chance to win tickets and VIP matchday experiences – the 2021 Match and Win promotion started again on 23 August with tickets and VIP Matchday experiences to be won.
- You can also sign up as a supporter at Cadbury FC Fan Club, where you’re automatically entered into prize draws to win tickets to your two favourite PL or EFL clubs (you can’t choose two rival clubs!). This doesn’t seem to be up and running yet for the 21/22 season.
Football League sponsors
- Sky Bet sponsor the Football League (Championship, League 1 & 2) – follow @skybeteflreward on Twitter for giveaways, and download the SkyBet EFL Rewards app (Apple or Android) for chances to win.
- Vanarama sponsor the National League – follow them on Facebook and Twitter for comps
Champions League sponsors & partners
- Expedia Group (Expedia & Hotels.com)
- Nissan
- PepsiCo (Walkers, Doritos & Pepsi) – every year there’s an instant win promotions on Pepsi, Walkers and Doritos with prizes of tickets and merchandise
- Santander – keep an eye on their Facebook page for ticket comps!
- Sony PlayStation
- Heineken
- Gazprom – sign up on their website to be emailed details of their UCL Ticketmania giveaways
- Mastercard – check the Priceless Mascot competition page regularly
Europa League sponsors & partners
- FedEx – follow on Twitter
- Heineken 0.0
- Kia Motors – check for comps on their website and Facebook page
- Enterprise Rent-A-Car
- Hankook Tire – check their competitions page
FA Women’s Super League sponsors
- Barclays – follow the WSL Facebook page
- Continental (also sponsor of The FA Continental Tyres Women’s League Cup)
- Mitre – follow on Facebook for occasional comps
World Cup 2022 sponsors
The next FIFA World Cup will be held in Qatar, in November/December 2022. Partners include Adidas, Hyundai-Kia, Qatar Airways, Coca-Cola and VISA but more will be announced nearer the time.
Euro 2024 sponsors
The 2024 UEFA European Football Championship will be held in Germany. It has lots of sponsors and partners across Europe, and I’ll update this post when they are confirmed!
Join a supporters club
Enrolling your child into your club’s junior supporters membership scheme is a good idea – my son is a member of both the Junior Gunners (Arsenal) and the Young Seagulls (Brighton) and they run lots of exclusive promotions online, in the programmes and in the club magazine. Some clubs are free to join too.
Register for the new www.englandfootball.com website for the chance to win exclusive England prizes.
More places to find ticket giveaways
- Local newspapers give away tickets regularly
- Match programmes and club websites often have competitions – check in the kids section!
- The TalkSport website has a competitions page – and listen in for text comps
- VBET_UK , @SportPesa_UK, BetFast and other betting websites run occasional Twitter comps for tickets
- Matchpint gives you the chance to win Premier League tickets if you can predict scores successfully and top the League table – download the free app to play!
- The Pitchero app and website for grassroots clubs sometimes runs competitions
- Match of the Day magazine and website has footy prizes, including tickets!
- Screwfix run a Ticket Tuesday promotion (currently paused due to Covid) to win EFL tickets
- There are regularly comps for people in the building, plumbing or electrical trades to win tickets – check your local stockists for any in store marketing!
- Gillette used to be a Champions League sponsor, and still do football related giveaways – at the moment you can train with Raheem Sterling.
If you have a specific team or competition in mind, then create a Google search – for example ”Win Europa League match tickets” – and filter it to only show results from the last week. Then check it every week for new comps! Find tips on doing this in my blog post How to search Google for competitions.
Hopefully this post has given you lots of ideas on how to win yourself some match tickets! Let me know in the comments how you get on.
Hi Di, thank you for posting this great information. I had a match in the Cadbury’s Match & Win and have been informed I’ve won Match Tickets, I’m not quite sure how it will work but I’m hoping for Man City tickets (having supported them for over 50 years) and if so that’s another item ticked off my Bingo prize wish list card.
That’s fantastic! Hope you get your Man City tickets.
Hi Di, I’m happy to report I’ve got my Man City tickets. Although the email Cadbury’s sent emphasized that it was on a first come first served basis, there were quite a few teams and games to go for. I clicked on all the links, chose the game I wanted to attend and completed the relevant sections and finally got an email saying “Back of the net!
Congratulations your tickets for the below match are now confirmed” so I’m presuming I’ve got them. Obviously with the proviso that the timings/date of the game I have chosen could change, i.e. presently it’s at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, which is unlikely to stay at that. All I would say and a Compers News Chatterbox reader kindly pointed out, it really is first come first served, so if someone gets a winning email for tickets to keep looking out for the follow up email to book them as quickly as possible. Thank you again for posting and good luck to you for Brighton and other compers entering this competion. I’ll keep trying for the VIP hospitality prize!!
That’s great news – enjoy the match!
My boys are into rugby. Any ideas on how to win rugby tickets? Thanks
Follow the tips here Jane – but researching and following rugby team, league and cup sponsors! Also a Google search for “Win Six Nations tickets” for example!