As you are probably already aware, the club is again changing how digital ticketing will work for the upcoming season. Not everything is yet finalised, but we wanted to update you on what we know so far.
Firstly, following representations from AISA, the club has agreed to continue to allow season tickets to be held on up to two devices. The initial plan was to lock each season ticket to a single device but this idea has been dropped for now. Providing you download the digital ticket from the Ticket Hub, you will be allowed to do so on two separate devices allowing you to more easily share with family and friends.
Secondly, if you have more than one season ticket in your own name, it is possible to hold multiple tickets on a single device. In other words, you can continue to act as the “administrator” for those tickets. Obviously, you cannot sit in two seats at once! The club would like all members to transfer the “other” seat(s) to the account of the member who is actually attending via ticket transfer.
Thirdly, we understand the club will shortly announce the introduction of ID Verification (IDV) to all existing member accounts including Gold and Platinum. The club’s objective here is to move to a position where it knows the true identity of everyone who attends a match. This is both a safety issue as well as an anti-touting measure and we expect it do be introduced in September or shortly thereafter. Your AISA representative on the club’s ticketing forum has been invited to a session to “road test” their new IDV system and to provide feedback from a user/member perspective. We will know more about exactly how the system will operate after this session and will provide a further update to members in due course. IDV is already in place for new Red and Silver members and our expectation is that it will work in the same way for existing Red, Silver, Gold and Platinum members—specifically requiring each account to be pre-validated with individual photo ID. More to come on this.
As regards away tickets, we are also waiting for more information on how these will operate. For now, ID verification will continue at point of collection for physical tickets. Where digital tickets are issued, they will be locked to the account of the individual member, but we expect further information to be available after the feedback session mentioned above.
From the club’s perspective, these new measures will bring a number of benefits to true Arsenal fans.
- Continue to drive out the ticket touts. 19,000 “bot” accounts have been closed this year preventing touts from entering the game-by-game ballot for tickets. It is hoped this weeding out will continue and will increase the success rate of genuine members in the ballot. You are only able to use ticket exchange if you have entered the ballot.
- Safety—simply knowing the true identity of everyone attending each match.
- Better access to away tickets by removing the ability of members to transfer away tickets to other members who may not have the requisite away points. It is expected that this will reduce the number of points required for some away matches and help with the complaint that away seats are a “closed shop”. 6 away matches last season sold out at 0 points apparently.
There will be a further update after the IDV session in early September when we will know more about how these changes will apply in practice.
Meanwhile COYG!