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The Goon Thread

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http://aisforarsenal.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/arsenals-actual-average-attendance-last.html
 
indianspur said:
just wait and see how difficult it will be for us to sell out our 61k new stadium.................Levy is going to have to use some innovative ticket pricing to get the fans in
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Arsenal publish the number of tickets sold as the official attendance. Most games are pretty close to a sell-out. Their useless fans only show up for the big ones.
 
The reality of attendances at Arsenal can be revealed today, after the club conceded 120,000 seats were left unoccupied during last season.

Official figures released by the Gunners have recently been based on the number of tickets sold, rather than the number of supporters physically entering through the turnstiles on matchdays.

Consequently, attendances announced during matches have often caused consternation, given the total is almost always very close to the stadium’s capacity of 60,338 despite readily identifiable empty seats.

The club confirmed an average attendance of 59,786 last season but the figure according to the Metropolitan Police was 53,788 — nearly 6,000 lower, totalling 173,945 more empty seats at Emirates Stadium over the course of the year than officially claimed.

This information was obtained by an Arsenal supporter and blogger named ‘John B’, who applied for the accurate figures under the Freedom of Information Act. The Met Police responded to his request with a full spreadsheet claiming that, on average, 6,550 seats were left empty during each of Arsenal’s 29 home games last season.

However, Arsenal categorically state the Met Police figures are inaccurate. They insist those numbers include only supporters going through the turnstiles and not those entering through the stadium car parks into VIP areas, executive boxes and other hospitality areas.

They conduct their own internal attendance counts and believe the total figure is closer to 120,000, which equates to more than 4,000 unused seats at every game or two matches per season played in an empty stadium.

A club spokesman told Standard Sport: “The vast majority of matches are sold out but, of course, we want to see the stadium full for every match. We are working hard to make sure people who buy tickets actually attend the matches and are developing a number of systems to help fans unable to attend matches sell their tickets in advance.”

Not in dispute, however, is the existence of a disparity between tickets sold and actual attendances. This is, of course, not a problem exclusive to Arsenal with many clubs increasing the levels of corporate hospitality and executive areas which generates revenue but does not guarantee the same loyalty as a regular supporter.

Arsenal are one such club believed to have thousands of season ticket holders who attend only a handful of times a season.

To combat the problem, they have introduced a Ticket Exchange service where unwanted tickets can be resold. The club believe 40,500 tickets were reassigned through this method last season but one ongoing criticism of the system is that sellers cannot set the price of their tickets and instead must be resold at face value.

The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust believe it may be necessary for the club to revoke season tickets from members who only sporadically attend games.

“The AST have been raising this issue with Arsenal for a long time and progress is now being made,” an AST spokesman told Standard Sport. “We have urged them to make real investment into improving their ticket exchange arrangements and to incentivise the use of tickets by allocating Cup Final tickets to those who go to most games and they say this is something they’d like to do when technology allows.

“It may even be time to consider removing season tickets from those who rarely attend
 
I don't get the obsession with this?

they sold the seats, they got the money, who gives a **** if anyone was actually sat in it, surely any money spent by fans in the shop or concessions is much less than the actual ticket price
 
galeforce said:
I don't get the obsession with this?

they sold the seats, they got the money, who gives a **** if anyone was actually sat in it, surely any money spent by fans in the shop or concessions is much less than the actual ticket price
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So you wouldn't give a **** if nobody turned up and the atmosphere was ****, as long as people had bought the tickets?
 
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