There’s been a flurry of activity on Twitter concerning the club’s announcement yesterday about doing away with the £4 subsidy towards away tickets.
The decision was taken, the message said, ‘after careful consideration and discussion with supporters (sic) groups.’
When Tweets appeared, demanding why AISA had supported this, the answer given was we had no knowledge of it.
We’ve since followed it up and now know that it was actually raised at a ‘Ticketing Workshop’ in January. This was more of an awareness session regarding future plans, with supporters groups made aware and able to input on issues that might arise, and suggest modifications and implementation – and some important improvements were made – but not to change any decisions already taken by the club.
Regarding on the £4 away subsidy however, AISA was unaware that this had even come up as our representative on that group was called away from the meeting, and as this was an ‘in camera’ closed session, there were no records of topics covered and minutes. That meant AISA was completely unaware of the club’s intentions.
We do know now, from our friends at AST, that the subsidy removal was presented at that meeting, and understand that while it was pointed out to the club that it would be an unpopular move, the club made clear it was going to press ahead with it.
To the club’s credit, we are told that the money came originally from a Premier League ‘pot’ that was removed years ago, yet Arsenal kept it going. So maybe its eventual removal was inevitable.
The only outstanding issue for us is the way the club presented the news, making it sound like supporters’ groups were complicit and in full agreement with it. It seems almost as if the message expected flak and was written to offset the blame. We will be raising this privately with the club.
AISA Committee June 27 2023
