We thank all our supporters for the amazing support this season.
We’re aware that some of our members have found it difficult to access tickets due to unprecedented levels of demand and we know, in some instances, tickets have been acquired through bot traffic and touts.
We are working extensively to address these issues and clamp down on this illegal activity. We want to keep supporters updated with progress on this.
Our increased efforts include a new process for dealing with suspicious online activity. This means users will either be banned immediately if there's sufficient proof of illegal activity, or tickets purchased where we suspect unusual behaviour will be held for collection where the purchaser must produce ID to obtain them. If they're a season ticket holder, our stadium management team will also carry out seat checks to ensure the right person is using the ticket.
In recent months, we have been sending more Arsenal ticketing staff to away games to carry out a greater number of enforced collections of tickets where we suspect suspicious behaviour. These supporters are required to show their ID to collect tickets.
We’re also working on developing new technology that blocks email addresses or payment cards once they’ve been associated with an account that has previously been blocked for touting activity. New and improved technology that requires supporters to prove they’re not bots has also been introduced. This will be updated regularly to ensure returning bots can’t navigate the system.
The technological enhancements we’ve implemented have already resulted in the blocking of over 25,000 IP addresses for suspicious activity each time we’ve gone on sale to members in recent weeks. We expect the security improvements will enable us to identify more misused memberships which would add to the thousands of members we have already banned for ticket touting.
We want to stress that these measures will not impact supporters who are purchasing tickets for themselves and we remind all supporters that tickets for our matches are only available through the channels as advertised on Arsenal.com and official Arsenal channels. Anyone buying tickets from unofficial outlets runs the risk of being denied access to the match, paying heavily inflated prices and receiving fake or duplicated tickets.
To help protect our supporters from touting, and to improve the availability and access to our matches, we also operate the Arsenal Ticket Exchange – providing a safe and secure place for members to exchange and acquire tickets. However, we must remind everyone that the current demand for tickets is extremely high with hundreds of members often trying to simultaneously purchase the limited number of tickets that are posted.
We’ll continue our work to combat the illegal sale of match tickets and share best practices on combatting bots and touts with other football clubs. We reiterate, any Arsenal member found to be touting will have their membership cancelled.
If you have been affected by touting or want to report an unauthorised seller/website, please email us.
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
