4 Mar 2026 • 3 minute read
Case Study
FC United of Manchester
How a fan-owned club ditched plastic season tickets
and never looked back.
Nearly every football club issues season tickets. From the Premier League down to Step 5 and beyond, it is the backbone of matchday operations. And a large proportion of those clubs print those tickets on plastic.
Think about that for a second. Hundreds of PVC cards per club, per season, across thousands of clubs. Cards that get used for around 30 home games per season sit in a wallet for nine months, then get binned. That is a lot of plastic for something with a very short shelf life.
FC United of Manchester saw the problem clearly. A fan-owned, community-driven club with genuine values around sustainability does not hand its supporters a piece of PVC and pretend that aligns with its ethos.
So they switched. Three seasons ago.
FC United of Manchester is not your average football club. Founded in 2005 by Manchester United supporters who opposed the Glazer takeover, FCUM is 100% fan-owned. Every decision, from ticket prices to shirt sponsors, runs through its members.
That community-first identity is not just a line on a website. It shapes everything the club does. Including the materials their season tickets are made from.
Operating in the shadow of Old Trafford, FCUM competes for attention with one of the most recognised clubs on the planet. That makes every brand touchpoint matter. A season ticket is not just access to the ground. It is a statement of belonging.
Green Gift Cards replaced FCUM's plastic season tickets with 100% paperboard cards made from Invercote, produced at one of the most environmentally responsible paper mills in the world. The cards are FSC certified, carry the trusted Plastic Free mark, are carbon scored, are fully recyclable, and compostable to EN13432.
Here is how the process works. Think of it like a two-stage production line.
Stage one: print production: Using the Ricoh Pro C9500 press, we digitally print both sides of the Invercote sheets in a single process. This low-energy consumption press, jointly developed with Green Gift Cards, the first of its kind, a sheet-fed toner-based machine, can handle up to 800-micron thick material and produces almost no waste at all. The sheets are then punched into individual cards.
Stage two: personalisation.
The reverse of each card is printed in-house using an Evolis Primacy 2 DTC desktop printer using a low-cost mono wax ribbon. Member name, seat location, membership type, and unique card number. Every card is individual to its holder and personalised on demand for each fan.
This two-stage approach gives the club the best of both worlds. Professional, branded cards that look the part, with the flexibility to personalise on-demand without waiting for a bulk print run. Need a replacement mid-season? Print one in minutes.
|
Seasons Using Green Gift Cards |
3 (and counting) |
|
Season Tickets Produced Per Year |
500+ |
|
Card Complaints Received |
Zero |
|
Carbon Reduction vs Plastic |
95% |
|
Cost Per Card |
Less than PVC |
|
Home Games Per Season |
30+ |
Read that third row again. Zero complaints. Three seasons, 500+ cards per year, 30+ home games of wallet-in, wallet-out punishment, and not a single negative report about card quality or durability.
That is the stat that kills the "but paperboard is not as durable as plastic" objection stone dead.
Switching to sustainable season tickets is not just an environmental decision. It is a smart operational one. Here is why.
At around 40p per card, paperboard season tickets cost a fraction of what clubs charge for a season ticket. If a supporter pays £200-£300 for their season ticket, the card itself is a rounding error.
Fans care about their club doing the right thing. Especially at community-owned and lower-league clubs, where the relationship between supporter and club is personal. A plastic-free season ticket says "we care about the same things you do."
That is not marketing fluff. That is brand building at its most fundamental level.
Every club talks about sustainability these days. Most of it is surface-level. Switching your season tickets to plastic-free paperboard is a tangible, visible action that every single season ticket holder literally carries in their pocket. It is sustainability your fans can touch.
The cards perform identically to plastic. Green Gift Cards has swipe-tested their paperboard cards over 400 times with no data degradation. They accept barcodes, QR codes, magnetic stripes, and personalised data. Same functionality. None of the environmental guilt.
FC United of Manchester is not an outlier. They are an early mover. Clubs like Saracens RFC and Hatch Cricket have made the same switch, and they keep coming back year after year.
Think of it this way. Every club in the country issues season tickets. Whether you have 50 season ticket holders or 5,000, every single one of those plastic cards has an alternative that is cheaper, greener, and performs just as well.
The question is not "should we switch?" The question is "why haven't we switched already?"
Green Gift Cards has been disrupting the card industry since 2006. Based in the UK, we are the leading manufacturer of plastic-free, compostable cards for gift, loyalty, membership, and season ticket applications.
Our cards are made from Invercote paperboard by Holmen Iggesund in Sweden, produced at a mill powered entirely by bioenergy with zero fossil fuels. Iggesund plants 40 million trees per year but harvests fewer. The forest expands every single year.
Our cards carry the Plastic Free Trust Mark from A Plastic Planet, FSC certified, and compostable to EN13432. When a card reaches the end of its life, it goes in with normal household recycling or composts naturally. No specialist recycling. No landfill guilt.
Greener
Compostable and recyclable
Cheaper
Save up to 40% compared to plastic
Quicker
Turnaround average 20 working days
Introducing our range of plastic-free cards
Since 2006 we have been innovating and disrupting in the card market to develop what is a leading range of environmentally-friendly card solutions. So what sets us apart?
Well that’s the thing, there’s a number of reasons why Green Gift Cards are renowned in the world of card production. It is the material we use for our cards and the certification that the cards come with. It is also the compelling environmental story (we urge you to watch the video) that is behind all of our cards and the fact that, once finished with, our cards are compostable and can be recycled in normal household waste streams. Oh and we’ll say it again – being environmentally-friendly doesn’t mean they are more expensive. In fact they offer great value compared to plastic cards.
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If you would like to talk to us about your next card order or would like to know more about what makes our products so unique, call us on 01794 725 454 or request a call back.
White paper
Read our latest white paper to find out one simple change organisations can implement today to help tackle the issue of single and limited use plastic.
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Customers
Green Gift Cards works with a diverse range of customers, from global brands to independent retailers, all committed to reducing plastic waste.
