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| The South stand taking shape - 13 July 2013. |
There are some 2500 new seats in total being installed in the temporary covered stand for the new season and I would imagine that those fans will either have access to the facilities in the East stand or the Main stand during the game and at half time. While Block 1 of the Main stand now has family season ticket holders occupying the area, I would expect it will only be home fans from the temporary stand that have access to the Main stand for refreshments.
The more I look at it, I can't see away fans being allowed in the new temporary stand. There was enough room for West Ham supporters to fit in the East stand Blocks 22-24 and if we are limiting away fans to 1500 next season it could be left up to home fans to try and fill the extra 2500 seats in the South end.
This would make it more of an advantage for AFCB with home support at both ends and perhaps a little more unusual for the away teams not seeing their supporters filling one end of the ground. There has been little problems with away fans being at one end of the East stand and I suppose we are all kind of used to them being there.
I like the idea of giving home fans who have not got season tickets the first chance to fill the South end, but if the club cannot attract a further 2500 home supporters for the games then the club will have been turning away money if it does not allow away fans who want to come from filling some of those empty seats.
Will there be annoyance or acceptance from other visiting clubs in the Championship if AFCB limits the number of away tickets, because of the ground's capacity? There seems to be no rule of a minimum number of seats or percentage of the available seats that must be offered to away supporters unless I am mistaken.
No doubt all will become clear very soon. I am certainly looking forward to seeing fans on all four sides of the ground and what a curtain raiser for that - Real Madrid!
The Football league rules state that; "Each Club must make provision for at least 2,000 visiting supporters at every home match or such number as represents 10% of the Club's certified capacity, if less than 2,000" (34.2.1) so giving the away fans the whole end would've been doing more than we needed to, something that I think would be unwise given that we seem to be close to selling out almost every match this side of Christmas already.
ReplyDeleteAlso worth noting is 34.2.8 which states how prices are determined for away tickets, according to this we can charge more for the seats in the East stand than those in the south stand, hence keeping the cheap tickets for our own fans!
Hi AFCBNG - Thank you for the informative comments. If the club has to offer 2000 seats to away fans certainly most of them (1800 or so) could get in blocks 22-24 of the East stand.
ReplyDeleteNo Peter we only have to offer 10% - so if the new capacity is 12,000 then 1200 would be enough to meet min requirement - I think giving them the 1600 allocation that we gave to West Ham would work well.
ReplyDeleteJim