Our reporter Ewan Wishart will be uniting Tyne Valley Toon supporters for the 25/26 season with his column, The Toon Crier.
St James' Park has always been fuelled by the passion and noise of local, working-class fans; yet with tickets and merchandise skyrocketing, those same supporters - the people who buoyed Newcastle United through some dark days - risk being priced out by their own club.
A new £1bn, 68,000-seater stadium has also been proposed, another factor, alongside Newcastle's growing ambition, that will inevitably see the cost of supporting the club spike.
In recent seasons, the atmosphere at the ground has nosedived. Could the Magpies' rise on the pitch lead to them becoming a 'tourist club' and losing the fabric and essence of Newcastle United?
Success and ambition bring higher costs
A decade ago, the cheapest Newcastle Premier League match-day ticket was around £27; now, season-ticket holders paid £65 for Qarabag FK's recent visit and £69 for Barcelona on March 10, with members expected to be nearer £75.
What used to buy you a standard league game barely covers half of a single Champions League night. It's part of a clear pattern of costs rising and rising for Newcastle United fans.
Ten years ago, a standard Newcastle season ticket was roughly £500, with clear discounts for seniors and young fans. Now, many ordinary adults are paying more than £750, seniors are north of £600 in key areas, and 18-21s are often treated as full-price adults in prime areas.
Over the last decade, the price of a Newcastle home shirt has climbed from roughly the mid-£40s for an adult replica to £85 in 25/26.
And junior shirts that were around £25-30 are now about £55-60, mirroring the steep rise in ticket prices and piling extra pressure on families already stretched to get into St James' Park.
Although prices were already creeping up, the real catalyst for the big jump in costs came after the Saudi Arabian-backed PIF takeover in October 2021.
Many long-standing price-freeze deals - established during Mike Ashley's tenure - have ended, and there have since been three successive 5% rises in season-ticket prices, with ordinary adults and new buyers taking the hit.
At the same time, the Premier League, under pressure over state-backed spending, has tightened its Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), limiting how much Newcastle can lose and how fast they can grow their wage bill.
Those stricter rules may protect the league, but they also push clubs like Newcastle to squeeze every possible pound from match-going supporters and merchandise.
Even with those restraints, Newcastle have still achieved what, in the context of the last several decades, feels like monumental success, which includes league finishes of 11th, 4th, 7th and 5th since the takeover, plus two Carabao Cup finals and one long-awaited win.
What's been made clear, though, is that for Newcastle to compete with the 'big six' in the long term, they need to raise their profits.
Alongside raising prices for fans, major commercial deals with brands such as Adidas, Sela, and Noon have injected new money into the club.
As first reported in the national press, there is also a plan for a near-70,000-seater, £1bn-plus stadium on or near Leazes Park, tied to a wider city-centre regeneration scheme, alongside a proposed new, top-end training ground at Woolsington.
These moves are designed to close the gap and help Newcastle reach the pinnacle of English football again - but at what cost?
Although closing the gap, Newcastle are still a way off having one of the world's highest revenues, but they do have the wealthiest owners, and those owners are having to lean heavily on fans' wallets to keep up with the big boys.
The fear for many supporters is that loyal, working-class, match-going fans will be priced out in favour of more corporate seating and tickets ending up with tourists via touts at highly inflated prices.
Another worry is a gradual reduction in the number of season-ticket holders, a model many clubs prefer because it allows them to sell more individual match tickets at higher prices and maximise profit.
Measures like these have already had obvious effects at some of England's most historic and successful clubs. Compared with even just the 1980s and 1990s, countless fans now talk about the atmosphere dropping off at grounds like Anfield, Old Trafford and the Emirates (then Highbury).
Newcastle fans, myself included, have craved success for years. But there is a very real worry that future accolades will slowly strip away the identity of the club.
The feeling of Newcastle is what makes it so special and unique. It's grim that, thanks to PSR and the hyper-commercial, business-first nature of the modern Premier League, for Newcastle to compete right at the very top, they may have to sacrifice some of the very things that drew so many - especially local, working-class people - in to begin with.
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