Arsenal have revealed they will discount all tickets for away games this season by £2.50 after concerns were voiced by the Premier League Supporters’ Trust about the treatment of travelling fans.
The move, which is welcome albeit a somewhat token gesture, marks a victory for the likes of the AST, AISA and the Black Scarf Movement who’ve all rallied hard to raise awareness of the spiralling costs associated with following The Arsenal over land and sea…and Leicester.
Last season Arsenal fans shelled out more than £50 to watch the Gunners at Spurs, Manchester City, Norwich and QPR and nearly £60 at Chelsea. Away fans at the Emirates, as was heavily documented when City supporters boycotted one game, faced similarly high prices.
Speaking about the development, Ivan Gazidis noted:
“This is an ongoing process. We’re pleased to be giving something back to our supporters who travel the length and breadth of the country to support the team away from home in the Premier League. They are the lifeblood of the Club and we want to recognise that in a fair and meaningful way.
“We are also taking steps to help make visiting supporters feel more at home when they visit Emirates Stadium.”
As a further show of goodwill, Arsenal are also set to offer the club’s away supporters a £10 refreshment voucher (to be redeemed at the Emirates) as a thank you for their continued cross-country loyalty.
[Insert gag about how many chips that will buy…]
Arsenal are spoiling us this year. Now for a trophy…
“We are also taking steps to help make visiting supporters feel more at home when they visit Emirates Stadium.”
If away fans ever feel ‘at home’ when they come to the Emirates then something’s gone seriously f*cking wrong.
Dropping the price by £2.50 and then talking about ‘giving something back to our supporters’ and recognising that ‘they are the lifeblood of the Club in a fair and meaningful way’. WTF? It’s a bit pathetic if you think about the sums involved in the game..
At least they’ve spend some of that cash on Özil
2 quid sounds like nothing, but how many people are going to benefit from it? And how many times? The tiny amount of money builds up really quickly and though the final cost is probably not too great compared to some of the other expenditure the club is accounting with, it’s still a really huge fucking amount of money.
Works out around £200,000 apparently.
So 2 weeks of Walcotts wages.
Not huge at all really.
Wow..this is so nice.A very genuine offer!!!The bond between the club and fans must be the most important issue in our game.With our current squad and form, financial strength and sustainable leadership,the so called “trophy” will come soon.come on you gunners!!!!
proud to be a gunner!!!!
How many Tottenham Commemorative DVDs can you buy for £2.50?
I believe DVD should more properly be represented as CMXCV which is approximately the same year the Spuds last won the League
*gets cape*
Next Ivan Gazidis will be bringing out the ferrero rocher!
Why are people moaning
I’m glad it’s the away supporters who are being rewarded, because those guys are absolutely amazing. They’ve hollered us to how many away wins in a row now!? But the home support is pretty lousy. I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done about that, but I don’t get how teams like Dortmund and Marseille can get such brilliant atmospheres in their stadiums, really spurring their teams on, while the only atmosphere generated in ours is one of nervousness and tension. Sure it’s partly to do with the team not being world-beaters (yet), but I reckon the fans… Read more »
I don’t know about Marseille, but I imagine Dortmund’s may have something to do with how well they’ve done as a club of late. Wise spending, lots of trophies, smashing Munich every now and then… what would they have to be angry about? Over on our lot, we’ve gone whatever years without a trophy, have consistently finished 4th, etc. I’m not as bitter about us ‘under-achieving’ of late because I understand we had to pay for the new stadium, but I can understand the anger and frustration some other fans feel. Anyhow, last game the atmosphere was pretty positive. I… Read more »
In my opinion a stadium’s atmosphere shouldn’t be dependent on the team’s results (to an extent: fans should have the right to voice discontent). Ever hear about the 12th man?
Even during their dark years when they almost went bankrupt the atmosphere in their stadium was far superior to even the best nights we have enjoyed at the Grove.
Imo the reasons for that are mostly socioeconomic and hard for us to do much about if we want to keep our matchday income.
Dortmund has had amazing support as long as I’ve known. It’s partly down to the Westphalen Stadion holding nearly 80-odd thousand, it’s partly down to Germany still having standing areas at games and it’s partly down to tickets being affordable for the hardcore support. Arsenal hasn’t bred that kind of support since moving to the Emirates. It would be nice to see the home support being a bit more vociferous.
Ahem *westfalenstadion*
Dortmund’s always been like that
one thing i may add – the seating doesn’t go up right to the pitch in the same way the ‘older’ stadiums – for example highbury, are/were. maybe size of pitch has an effect too as highbury was noted for being one of the tighter pitches as i remember. either way, the grove is a remarkable stadium and we have just scratched the surface of what the extra capacity can generate us financially. just my opinion…
In Marseille, they are not only the loudest people in the stadium – they are the loudest in cafes and restaurants and movie theaters and probably in bed too. They tend to be loud as a “cultural” group, whatever this means. And the club means something for the entire city, a bit like Barcelona. Arsenal, you may dislike it, attracts a lot of “foreign” supporters – by foreigners, I mean not only people from outside North london, but even from London, from England, and from Europe. Maybe the cultual mix doesn’t help, especially when the very expensive tickets make them… Read more »
Not too effective, but making the foods/drinks queue quicker may help at least reduce the sight of the early leavers and late returnees during half time. Cheaper tickets will definitely help too. You get the feeling that some of the people in the stadium are of a socioeconomic strata, shall we say, that does not do shouting. It’s odd when the odd Southeast Asian dude is the one singing himself hoarse in a sea of quiet Englishmen. And there’s the old “singing section” idea, which is to be avoided, but there needs to be a way to build up a… Read more »
Well said, something definitely needs to be done about the ‘library’. We just need to get rowdy and make some noise, the players will blatantly love it!
We’re not the only club that has a shit atmosphere. Chelsea and Man U can be pretty dire.
Unfortunately the toxic corperate dump that is the premiership breeds these cuntish fans that know nothing of supporting a club and see only whats in the trophy cabinet come May.
Burn it all
Is the £10 voucher just for Away Ticket Scheme/Travel Club members, or do you get one when you buy an away ticket?
What I guess they will do (as they did a similar thing last season) is to pick an away match then give everybody passing through the turnstiles a voucher.
I think they are planning to physically hand out vouchers to away fans at a specific game…like they did last year at Wigan.
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/away-fans-receive-festive-gift-at-dw-stadium
Standing terraces would be nice.
Standing terraces are not something Arsenal can do at the moment as an all seater stadium is mandatory following the Taylor report after Hillsborough.
And (as Celtic fans recently discovered) the local authorities can enforce closure of sections of the ground in the event of persistent standing – some people should bear that in mind next time they complain about the ‘jobsworth’ stewards forcing them to sit down!!
Those rules are weird I understand why there are no standing terraces but to be able to shut down a seating section due to standing… That’s crazy. If you tried to shutdown my universitie’s student section for not sitting on the bleachers during our American football games there would be a legitimate riot.
We have to be fair here of course – these rules follow on some very terrible disasters that led to many deaths and injuries and whether the rules are effective or not, the motivations are most certainly convincing.
I think the Europeans seem to have more song like chants that are a lot longer than ours too. If also makes it a little unique, unlike “… by far the greatest team etc.” which is basically sung by everyone.
They’ve also got more organisations though, while we have more individual groups attending. I’m not sure how true this argument is, but it can be down to higher ticket prices meaning people attend a few games sparsely throughout the season, whereas some European teams have a large chunk of people attending regularly and building up rapport with each other.
Maybe we can get bobby pires to write a song. Then star in the music video ~sigh…
Loyalty always pays, I strongly believe that with this cheering news positive energy will be generated by the fans during home and away games.
will you be having a live blogcast of game today?
Just keep winning. Thats all we ask for.
Just throwing this out there,read something a while back that the FA or a similar org. had made a pool of funds available, to be split by all EPL clubs equally.The money provided was to be used by the clubs to help their travelling away fans,no doubt at the clubs discreation.I think Stoke are paying coach travel for their fans.Did anyone see this?
Having checked futher into my last comment,apparently it was The Premier League who will make available a £4 million pot per season for the next three years.It works out to be £200.000 per club,per season.
The atmosphere at our home games is tepid because our stadium is full of rich kids and middle class rugby fans. Our proper support has been priced out.
Away support at WBA was fucking brilliant