Arsenal have confirmed changes to the ticket purchase process for red and silver members that will come into effect from next season.
Whereas red and silver members are currently allotted a time slot to log into the club’s ticket portal to make a purchase, they will now enter into ‘exclusive ticket ballots’ for Premier League, FA Cup and European matches.
Tickets for the Carabao Cup will be made available as before during specific sales windows.
Arsenal says “the change is being introduced to provide the fairest and most convenient method for members to purchase these tickets.”
In February, the club also confirmed that four fewer games will be included in the price of a general admission season ticket from next season. Season ticket prices will also go up by an average of 5%.
The changes come as part of a wider review into the ticketing frustration experienced by members this season where demand has far outstripped supply; a situation exacerbated by abuse of the existing infrastructure by touts which has led to large numbers of tickets ending up in the hands of third-party agents.
The club has also committed additional manpower and technological improvements to safeguard against future abuse by touts and bots.
Things to note:
- Ballot timings for silver members will be 6-8 weeks before home games, for red members it will be 4-6 weeks. Cup games will have tighter turnarounds.
- Dates for ballot registration will be advertised by the club and you’ll be able to sync them to your calendar.
- Those wishing to attend with friends and family will be able to be balloted together.
- If the number of registrations for the ballot does not exceed the number of tickets, everyone in the ballot will be successful.
- If you are a parent or guardian and you’d like to attend a fixture with a Junior Gunner member, you will be able to enter a dedicated ballot for tickets in the Family Enclosure.
- Once a fixture sells out, you will now be able to buy and sell your match ticket on the club’s Ticket Exchange, offering additional flexibility if you’re unable to attend a game.
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For those looking for more information, it’s worth visiting the following pages for RED and SILVER members respectively.
Another shambles from the club regarding ticketing.
Would perhaps understand a small ballot for red members, but a blanket ballot for both red and silver members is not what was needed.
Members will just put their name down on every ballot and sell on the ticket exchange (and snapped up by bots no doubt) if they cannot make the game.
£54 annual silver membership fee for the right to enter a lottery.
Only here and only now, buy your ticket right now 🎟️
If the fee now only pays for the right to enter a ballot, then there should at least be a sliding scale of membership fees depending on years of paid membership, with the fee scrapped altogether after a certain number of years of continuous membership.
Ah, but remember, they changed the variations of membership formats/payments to make it easier.
I’m much happier paying £54 for my membership than I was paying £29, because it’s so much easier now.
I watched the last game on the computer so was close to the screen. There were still quite a few empty seats here and there. If there was a greater reward for putting your ticket on ticket exchange those of us who don’t get a chance to see the team now might have more luck. I hope people are aware of this initiative.https://www.thejc.com/news/news/arsenal-announces-new-antisemitism-plan-after-banning-fans-for-jew-hate-3etRc6jbgjkvokCcwT6XWr
I’m a red member and have been for 14 years. If I enter the ballot and am successful for a match, does that rule me out applying for another next season or can all reds apply for the ballot for every match?
Looks like you’ll be able to apply for as many games as you like, but of course they’re only releasing further details once membership renewal fees have been taken.
In sum, it seems this will be an improvement Instead of all of us logging in at 11 o’clock, breaking the server and not getting tickets, we can enter into the lottery in advance. It will then be decided in a second, and we save time reloading the page for hours. If we lose, it will be pretty much as it has been this season, where I at least never found any tickets (and resorted to the black market). If you win, well.. As far as I know, the sellers decide the price on Ticket Exchange. So why would they… Read more »
Pretty sure Ticket Exchange is face value only.
Club decides Ticket Exchange prices (based on their category system), not the seller. When you post a seat on TX you actually receive less than face value for your ticket (the club take an admin fee for re-selling your ticket), hence some fans selling on parasitic third party sites. I don’t have an issue with getting less than face value when I post on TX as, in theory, the ticket will go to an actual Silver or Red member. However it feels like the touts/bots are one step ahead of the club and hoover up anything that comes up and… Read more »
The club are removing the admin fee on Ticket Exchange to be fair
This is a fucking shit idea
Yep.
They fucked up by doing this stupid Covid holiday for season ticket holders and reselling the season tickets to other people (because they were greedy and wanted the money up front).
Now there aren’t enough excess seats to sell to members and they can’t make people give up their season tickets.
First come, first served was fair. Now you can’t really plan on what games to go to, because you might be successful in getting tickets or you might not, and anyone can get a ticket, even if they were slow in registering for the ballot.
Sorry, meant to say that the reselling the season tickets to other people was stupid, not the Covid holiday in the first place.
And yet when the Emirates was being built, the Five in Twenty twats up the Seven Sisters road reckoned we wouldn’t sell 60,000 +
I remember reading an interview with Danny Fizmann (rest his soul) where it was agreed in principle at a board meeting that we would initially try for an 80,000 all seater, but that Fire Safety Regulations couldn’t be met with the amount of surrounding access space.
A shame, because we would have filled 80,000 too, no problem.
*Fiszman
I’m a silver member and have been for 20 years. Usually i will get to 15-20 games a season with very little issue. Obviously this season has been chaotic but I have still got a ticket for every single game i’ve tried for and only one of those was via the ticket exchange. I have no idea how this ‘random’ ballot is supposed to work and whether i end up getting to less games or not. I recognise this as a genuine attempt to bring more fairness to the process, even if that works against me personally. BUT – the… Read more »
Agreed. Those who go to the most games should be recognized and given first dibs before any general ballot kicks in…
It would benefit me personally if there was a loyalty scheme, so i’m very tempted to agree with you! But it would also serve to give older fans a bigger advantage when it comes to buying tickets and is that really what any business wants to do, effectively push away new customers? Many other clubs do have a loyalty-style scheme in place though, so i guess it comes down to the people hat run our club.
Thats interesting that you have still managed to get the tickets you want. As a silver senior citizen member i had no problem until the Bournemouth home game when the system went into meltdown. Since then whatever time i join the que the tickets are sold out before i can log on. Don’t know if its to do with your broadband speed or which device you use? Also tried phoning but just told the phoneline que was full and cut off. For the final home game v Wolves the silver allocation sold out in five minutes, don’t know how the… Read more »
Old Bloke, may I ask whether you’re a red or silver member?
Also, is it true that you only get the senior citizen price in the family enclosure?
This hasn’t been a factor this season for me, but in the past I was unable to buy a ticket next to my dad in the family enclosure. That meant I had to buy tickets for him at regular prices for him to sit next to me, thus rendering the fact that the membership was specifically for senior citizens, useless.
I am a silver member but only get the senior citizen discount in the family enclosure areas, if i sit anywhere else its at full price. There is no physical barrier dividing the family areas and in the past i have managed to sit next to my son by buying tickets on the edge of the enclosure but this would be very difficult at the moment with the way tickets are selling out.
Thanks for answering. I think trying to get tickets next to each other like that is likely to be nigh-on impossible.
I think it’s ridiculous that a senior citizen can’t be accompanied by 1 person if they have to sit in the family enclosure to get the discount. I understand why they wouldn’t want to give the discount for other areas of the stadium (mainly greed, but hey-ho), but I don’t think the way it currently works is very fair.
I really don’t know whether I got lucky or was just fortunate to have the luxury and experience to know to queue at the right time. But the one I was unsuccessful for was the Wolves game – the club staff advised AST members at an event the week before not to bother logging on before 9.30am because they would simply kick everyone out of the system at that time, so i followed their advice and (why am I surprised?) that turned out to be complete bollox! So I know people who were logged into the system before 9am (I… Read more »
Yep, I got Southampton tickets by getting into a queue at 9:10. I went on at 9:02 for the Wolves game and the queue must’ve already been going for a while, because I got through at 10:10 and there were no tickets left. Rather than this stupid new system proposed, it would be better if you just had to log on at the time the tickets are supposed to go on sale (i.e. 10am) rather than sitting in a queue for an hour. If you get in right away, fine; if you don’t, you don’t have to wait around like… Read more »
Yep, I agree, i’ve never quite understood the queuing thing, i’ve always guessed it’s about not crashing the whole website at 10am but i’m far from an expert on this. Either way, if the Wolves game was the future then i’m all for doing something different and I do feel very sorry for the nurses and bus drivers etc among us members who can’t queue up from 9-10 and therefore have to rely on leftovers.
My answer to that would be: don’t have tickets going on sale at 10am on a weekday.
There’s no human input required from their side, so it’s not like they have to worry about people being at work if the tickets go on sale outside of normal working hours. Why not have them go on sale at 7pm, or on a Saturday morning?
Oh and I didn’t use any special device, just Edge and Chrome on a laptop plus my i-phone on the app and through Safari – 4 sets of queues and a case of seeing which ones gets through first!
Doesn’t say anything about where in the stadium the tickets are, and a ballot is a really weird idea, I don’t like it one bit. I usually pick up tickets on the exchange but this year it’s been well nigh impossible. Two tickets for the worst Europa League games, couldn’t get to the second one because the bloody trains were on strike and the crowd couldn’t be arsed for the first one. Horrible.
The only good thing about this that I can see is the fact that Silver & Rdd can now sell their tickets on Ticket Exchange too, which will hopefully make it more useful to those trying to use it to buy tickets.
Hadn’t thought about the point about the seat location. That’s another crock of shit that this crappy idea will bring about!
Another point re: the location of seats is that different tickets are different prices, so previously you could factor costs into your choice of seat. Now, you might want a behind goal ticket and end up with one on the wing and someone could equally be in the opposite situation.
I got Nottingham forest tickets on the ballot as a silver member but I hate the idea that you have no say what so ever in where you sit I prefer to sit lower tier towards the back but I got row 4 behind the goal iam glad I got a ticket but I wouldn’t of chose to sit there
As a season ticket holder i would like to see a shake up of away ticket allocation.Too many of them end up with people with 30+ credits.Many stadiums now hold in excess of 50000 so would an increase to say 4000 be a problem? Since the price of away tickets was subsidised it has been almost impossible to get one for premier league away matches. I would also like to see the club stop giving away tickets in membership competitions created by corporate hospitality and sponsors.I believe this is one of the reasons why general admission tickets are thin on… Read more »
I can’t believe this is happening. What’s the point in being a SM now?
Has anyone on here actually got a ticket in tge ballot.? Everyone I know including myself haven’t had any luck.
I am able to enter the silver and family enclosure. I will be interested to see if I actually get to any games this season.
I do now know someone who has got a ballot ticket. Money was taken out of his account, then he was informed of the seat he has been allocated.
There is no choice of price or seat position.
Seems crazy to me.
Managed to snipe an upper tier ticket for Forest after 30 minutes on the ticket exchange today. The problem is the ticket hasnt updated to the new digital pass on android! I predict there will be massive queues at Emirates on Saturday as people struggle with the new system. Get there early!