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Licensed standing update

Emirates Stadium

The Government has announced that licensed standing is permitted in football stadia. This follows a six-month trial which ran successfully at the start of the year (more info).

We have been in discussion with a Supporters’ Working Group on this subject since November last year and they were part of developing a survey we sent to ticket holders in May. We had a fantastic response to this survey with more than 16,000 supporters providing views.

The reaction from our supporters reinforced some of the challenges introducing licensed standing presents at Emirates Stadium. Whilst the majority of our supporters (70%) are in favour of licensed standing being introduced, a minority (40%) actually want their seat to be in a licensed standing area.

We understand these views and the broader debate around licensed standing across the game and are committed to exploring if and how it could be introduced at Emirates Stadium. However, we must be clear the introduction of licensed standing at Arsenal will not result in an increased capacity at Emirates Stadium as there must be one seat / space per standing person. As a club, we would also incur significant costs to implement licensed standing.

We are now working through the best way to resolve the operational challenges. These include the following:

  • defining a process for re-locating Season Ticket holders who do not wish to be in a safe standing area
  • segregating the stadium bowl, concourse and turnstiles to avoid migration from non-standing areas to licensed standing areas, and determining resulting capacity loss and impact on supporters’ experience
  • consulting our Safety Advisory Group about an application for licensed standing areas

We will continue to keep you up to date with developments.

Thanks for your support.

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