Thursday 20th April 2023
In the last few days Arsenal have held meetings of their ticketing working group and Advisory Board. The AST attended both these meetings and talked to the issues set out below. Our proposals are based upon the feedback and dialogue we have had from members including the comments received ahead of, and during, the virtual AST meeting with Arsenal.
We expect the club to announce an update to their ticketing arrangements in the coming days.
You can read more about the work we have already undertaken here.
Many of you recently joined us for the meeting we held with Arsenal on ticketing and you can watch a recording of that meeting here.
TICKETING ISSUES: ACCESS & TOUTING – AST APRIL 2023 SUBMISSION
The following note sets out some further input from the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST) that we ask you and your colleagues to consider ahead of further discussion on these items at forthcoming Arsenal Advisory Board (AAB) and Fans’ Forum ticketing sub group meetings in April 2023. We have broken these down into the two issues of access and touting.
Firstly can we can thank you and your team for the openness and genuine engagement of the last few months. In recent weeks we have held an open AST meeting with Tom and Amy that received lots of positive feedback from members who now have a better understanding of the approach the club is taking and who felt more engaged as a result of a process that allowed them to put their questions and ideas across. There has also been lots of direct engagement as issues have arisen. Our belief is openness and accountability both reassures supporters about why things are happening and leads to better policy making. We hope that we can continue to work in this spirit as everyone involved with the club gets to grips with the ticketing challenges that have arisen principally as a result of the increased demand to watch this exciting Arsenal team.
Access
On ticketing access, you confirmed in the January AAB that the policy whereby season ticket holders who regularly leave their seats empty would lose the right to renew that ticket would be implemented. The adoption of this ‘use it or lose it’ policy, which follows years of AST campaigning, is very welcome. It appears that it has helped to drive more seat utilisation this season which was of course the intention. For next season we would like to see the number of times a season ticket should be used be increased to at least 75% of the season ticket for games when the Ticket Exchange has been opened (17 games out of 22 if every game sells out). This should have the effect of making even more seats available on a match-by-match basis.
We also reiterate our request that there should be no fees applied for the use of the Ticket Exchange to match the policy being introduced for the ticket transfer service. We need to do everything to persuade people to use the Ticket Exchange as a controlled way of relisting tickets, and removing what is a high 10% commission fee would help to do this. If the club does feel it necessary to continue with fees we would suggest that these are borne by the purchaser rather than the seller.
The Ticket Exchange should also be opened up for all tickets to be listed – be they gold, silver or red. With silvers buying two months and reds one month in advance, people will find there are games they subsequently can’t attend. By allowing them to also list their tickets it will also help to fill more seats.
The process for buying general admission tickets at Arsenal has reached the stage where it can be fairly described as sub-optimal. A first come, first served queuing system that always opens at 10am and immediately sells out is unfair on those who for work or personal reasons cannot log in at that time. Those that do log in now find themselves in an interminable queueing system that often resets itself and generally provides little customer satisfaction. This form of queuing also favours bot-based systems that can flood the system and supplant real applicants. We believe that this purchasing process needs an overhaul with the introduction of arrangements that are both fair to all and offer a better user experience.
This year the silver membership ticket allocation was reduced by circa 500 tickets a game. This has exacerbated the demand pressures for these long-standing members who pay for a priority membership service and are feeling let down. We ask that the allocation awarded to the silver membership scheme is increased to at least the amount made available in previous seasons.
To maintain supporter confidence in the system we request that ahead of next season the club makes clear how many tickets will be made available in each category, and how many members there are in that category. It should also be announced after each sale how many members applied in the respective categories.
Touting
We are pleased that in recent weeks the club has stepped up its efforts to address touting, including the appointment of external industry experts. It greatly frustrates supporters to see tickets that have been allocated to fans, either via season tickets or membership schemes, appear on the secondary market at significantly increased prices.
Effective tackling of ticket touting will require considerable and sustained investment of both personnel and financial resource by the club, and we would welcome your reiteration of this commitment.
The most important workstream for tackling ticket touting is for the club to step up awareness and understanding of the issue among supporters. This includes explaining fully to people the measures being implemented and the risks to them of buying and selling themselves on the secondary market. To start we would request in the April AAB that a breakdown is given of how many gold, silver and red memberships have been cancelled for touting this season.
There also needs to be a sustained communication effort that includes: messages on the big screens, leafleting at turnstiles, signage and loudspeaker announcements, programme messages, email updates and external media stories. We would also advocate every member signing a form that confirms their adherence with the resale T&Cs.
Other actions that need implementing include:
It is likely that the red membership is the source of the greatest amount of touting. So increased focus needs to be placed on addressing this. The current system that sees a red member banned but that individual allowed to purchase another red membership immediately is clearly flawed.
We believe that verifiable personal identification should be provided by a new red member (this could also be applied retrospectively to existing red and silver members) and that a photo should added to membership cards. If that ID is subsequently found to have been the source of touting it should be permanently banned from opening up a new membership. Alongside this it would be worth considering an amnesty whereby people who hold more than one membership in the same name/address can update their details so that each ticket has a specific name and ID registered to it.
In summary we recognise that the huge demand for tickets has put massive pressure on historic systems and that more fundamental change may be needed for 2024/25 as technological upgrades and new arrangements need long lead-in times. We request that sufficient resources and time are allocated to building a system that is first in class and that supporters are fully involved in the consultation and review stages.
