We all know that Arsenal have one of the biggest fanbases all over the world, and every match-day there are at least 53,000 in attendance at the Emirates. There are 45,000 season ticket holders who have entry to every home game and it would only be reasonable of them all to expect to be first in line for our FA Cup semi-final appearance at Wembley, and there would probably be the same amount of casual fans that would like to watch the Gunners at Wembley.
But alas, the FA have other ideas and it looks like only around three-quarters of our core supporters will be allowed to go to the game. Arsenal Chief Exec Ivan Gazidis has made it clear that the club is unhappy with these arrangements. “The club has been advised by the FA that our ticket allocation for the FA Cup semi-final will be approximately 32,000 tickets.
“Similar to our experiences from last season’s FA Cup competition, we are once again very disappointed with this allocation. With the capacity of Wembley Stadium being approximately 90,000, the club does not agree with this relatively small proportion of tickets being given to both clubs.
Gazidis continued: “We will continue our dialogue with the FA in order to obtain as many tickets as possible for this match, but it is clear that many of our loyal supporters, who follow the team home and away, including our approximate 45,000 season ticket holders, will not be able to obtain a ticket for this huge match.”
This does seem extremely unfair, especially as our opponents (either Reading or Bradford) have a much smaller fanbase, averaging 19,000 and 12,000 respectively. Surely the first criteria for allocating tickets to Wembley should be to make sure that ALL season-ticket holders, irrespective of club, should have first refusal on semi-final and Final tickets. All this means is that the touts will have a field day diverting unused tickets by our opponents into Arsenal fans hands at extortionate prices.
It’s a shambles…..