Chief Executive explains ticket arrangements
For those who missed it in Saturday’s Accrington Stanley match day programme, Erik Samuelson explained how the club is planning to allocate tickets for the home match against Portsmouth on Saturday, 16 November.
We today reproduce that article below, which starts with an update about a potential move back to Plough Lane.
), and sets out the main reasons why AFC Wimbledon should be returning to Merton and the benefits that we will bring to the community by doing so.Stadium PlanHopefully, all Dons fans will have been given a copy of our “manifesto” as they entered the ground today. This is a summarised version of the business plan that is posted on the Merton Council’s website (click on
We published this document because we want all our fans to have the facts at hand and to be in a position to explain them to anyone who wonders what we are trying to do, or has concerns about the proposed move. So if anyone asks you about our plans, hopefully you are now better equipped to explain our ambitions.
This is just the start, and early next week we will be sending a copy to key contacts in the borough and also distributing them to selected addresses near the site of our proposed new stadium. You will be hearing and seeing a lot more about the new stadium over the coming weeks and months, but for now I will leave it there and move on to another topic: namely, how we are going to allocate tickets for the Portsmouth game.
Portsmouth have a fanbase substantially larger than any other in League Two, and as they are just down the A3 from us we expect that a substantial number of their fans will want to attend our game against them here at The Cherry Red Records Stadium on 16 November. We are giving them the maximum number of tickets we can offer a visiting team while maintaining effective segregation, but we expect that demand will far outstrip supply.
We want to make sure that all the other tickets go to our fans, and to our fans alone, so we’ve taken steps to try to make sure that happens. Obviously, season ticket holders are guaranteed their places for the game, but fans who pay on a match-by-match basis need looking after. This is why any fan who entered a home area in the stadium today, having paid for matchday entry (i.e. who isn’t a season ticket holder and therefore already catered for), will be given a voucher that entitles them to one ticket for the same area of the ground for the game against Portsmouth.
That entitlement gives priority until close of business next Friday, 18 October, after which the vouchers will cease to be valid. All remaining tickets will go on general sale the following Monday, 21 October. Until we see how many of the vouchers have been used, we won’t know how many tickets will go on general sale, but the arrangements will be announced on our official website the day before, Sunday 20 October. Exact details will be provided that day; one precaution we are taking is that anyone who wants to buy a ticket online for the Portsmouth game will be allocated a ticket only if he or she has bought a ticket for a home area in the stadium online for any of the first six home games of the season, including today’s game.
As always with this sort of difficult situation, we have spent a substantial amount of time trying to find a way to ensure that our fans – and only our fans – get access to the home areas that day. However, we know that some of our fans will, for all sorts of reasons, find that they can’t get a ticket for the game. I’m sure that in many of these cases this will feel unfair. We tried a whole range of different ways of doing this, but until we have a fully integrated contact database (which we are working on), we will always find it hard to make sure that regular fans get a ticket for the sell-out games. As always, if you think you know a better way for us to do this in future, we’re open to ideas.