A break from our usual irrelevance for a more serious message. As a proud Gooner and season ticket holder at Emirates as at Highbury, I was appalled the other day to discover, via an email from the club, that our two climactic Champions League home games – Villarreal and United, should we beat the yellow submariners, are NOT included in the price of my season ticket.
What?
These are season tickets already costing north of £1500, a price that this season has bought us some pretty shoddy home games, and some Arsenal performances you wouldn’t pay for again in a hurry. Yet you sit it out, through thick and thin, because you love the Arsenal, and as it’s turned out, we’re in a position where we’re still challenging for two major trophies.
Whatever the agreement or the contract of the ticket, I cannot believe, particularly in the middle of a recession which has seen all fans feel the pinch, Arsenal FC has the temerity to ask, in my case with four tickets, for close to £600 extra in order to see the most important matches of Arsenal’s season.
It makes no sense. All it creates is badwill, and a whopping surplus on next year’s already pricey ticket.
The season ticket should include ALL home games, I think, though I can see the arguments for excluding the Carling Cup matches (which it does already). Particularly after the year we’ve been having on the pitch, Arsenal should not be punishing season tickets holders for the club doing so well. It amounts to a deeply cynical and unashamedly calculating stealth tax based on the accurate assumption that fans will do anything to go to the last stages of the Champions League. It dodges raising season ticket prices so the club can appear to be fair, but shamelessly profiteers off the supporters’ love of the club at the end of the season. If the alternative has to be an increased season ticket, the club should at least have the honour to be open about it.
I accept that for Arsenal to be competitive the prices have to be reasonably high, and on the whole I don’t mind, but this is ridiculous.
I think it’s a complete robbery. I can’t be the only one who feels this way.
Rant over. Don’t forget to enter the Herbert Chapman t-shirt competition, and also to signup for your free £25 bet at the top.
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