European Ticketing Group

After drawing up a long list of questions (see “news” page) the FAB held a series of meetings with the club and the Football Supporters Association (FSA) and representatives from other Premier League clubs venturing in to Europe this season. These meeting took place the first week of August. The results formed the policy for allocation and fulfilment of tickets for the forthcoming matches and the collaborative working and resultant process have been widely praised by the fans and club alike.

Recruitment of new FAB members

The recruitment was completed in September 2023 with the additional 5 FAB members introduced on the “news” sections.  Informal Zoom meeting introductions took place and the first in-person meeting with the entire new FAB board and the club took place on October 24th. The minutes for these results will be published on the Albion website and elsewhere on this site.

Coach Park Congestion

Fans using the coach park had noticed that people were coming down the steps after the game. This felt unsafe given the volume of fans leaving the stadium.

The reason for this was that the oversized bag drop was located in the coach park.

The issue was raised at our first meeting with the club.

The club acted quickly to change the location of the bag drop to an area nearer to the stadium. This has worked well ensuring that the coach park steps now have one way traffic only.

Disabled Toilet Lighting

Members of the FAB noticed that the lights in the disabled toilets worked on a sensor switch.

The sensor switch timed out if there was no movement in thearea near the door.

This meant that wheelchair users were often plunged intodarkness whilst changing catheters inside a cubicle.

The club worked swiftly to ensure that sensor lights had alonger time delay to enable adequate time for everyone.

Ad-hoc Away Ticket Check

The Fan Advisory Board have spoken to the club about the ad-hoc checks that are planned for fans purchasing away match tickets, as this has caused a good deal of negative feedback on social media.

The objective is clear, to reduce the number of people at the top of the loyalty point scheme purely buying away tickets to maintain maximum points while passing tickets on to third parties. We all know this happens. Some of us have done it ourselves. This is terribly unfair on those lower down the loyalty ladder as it prevents them getting into that bracket and ever being able to get to the most popular matches.

So the club are taking on the hugely labour intensive and costly action of holding a small percentage of tickets back for issue by their staff adjacent to the away turnstiles, and writing names on all tickets, for random check by Albion stewards at away grounds.

If your ticket is one of those held back, you’ll receive an email.

If your ticket is one of those checked in the queue, you’ll need photo ID.

It won’t apply to 1901 club members because the majority of those are in the name of companies and not private individuals, so no photo ID exists.

The club have promised to make this ad-hoc checking “manageable” for their stewards, so you won’t have thousands of people being checked, nor the hold ups being onerous. Fans may need to get there a little earlier, but you won’t be going to the home team’s ticket office, so you won’t have to go out of your way. Let’s not forget another side of this issue – this season the club have had a number of issues at away games and the offenders are repeatedly not the ticket holders and quite often not on the database. They had also had issues with fans who were banned attending matches by gaining tickets from other fans.

Once we have stopped the loyalty points harvesting that goes on, and seen a reduction in the “spare ticket available” WhatsApp groups and Facebook posts, then we’re sure the level of ad-hoc checking will reduce. There will be games, like Arsenal in the Carabao Cup, where availability will exceed demand so naming and checking of tickets may not be necessary.

The idea is to make it fairer for those people who would like to attend more away games and who deserve the chance to do so.

Safe Standing Consultation

The subject of safe standing has been discussed with many pros and cons from fans and the club alike. Any changes will need to be carefully managed with respect to safety, cost, site lines and people moving if they don’t wish to stand.

The club agreed that it was time for further consultation on this matter conducted a targeted survey in December 2022.

The results were published in March 2023 and 53% of participants said that they not not wish to watch from the safe standing sections. The Board have “opted to prioritise near-term stadium investment on projects which will benefit the whole match attending fan base” such as an upgraded fan zone and new stadium sound system.

Flags and Banners

Fans have asked about larger flags / banners and covering the North Stand “grey wall”.

A Crowdfunder 15m x 12m flag was ready for the spurs game

We are working on a policy with the club for approving storing and displaying flags and banners going forward to enable fans to help build pre match atmosphere.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group is in its infancy, these are some of the issues that are being discussed with the club:

1. Extending the use of press/ goods lift to supporters – this is not going to be possible but discussions are ongoing to make the exit of fans with limited mobility safer.
2. Additional suitable transport for wheelchair users at park & ride points.
3. More seats/benches outside and on the concourse – This is work in progress by the club.
4. Better communication with fans on methods of reporting incidents including online abuse.
5. The possibility of introducing a dedicated disability group.
6. Introducing the concept of special information packs when renewing/buying tickets/season tickets for disability groups.
7. Make more prominent, stewards that are specially trained to handle issues faced by fans that are impaired.
8. Having train times posted on screens for fans waiting for queues to go down. This is especially useful for disabled fans.
9. We could also place a note on the site reminding fans of fact that there is a separate lane at the station for wheelchair users.

The club introduced the provision of rails in the Upper East Section to enable fans to push themselves up the ramp in a safer way:

 Women’s Football

The Fan Advisory Board will also raise issues from the Women’s season ticket holders. Some of the items that have been raised include:

1. Potentially later kick offs as a huge majority of the fan base are young girls who play football themselves & aren’t able to attend earlier kick offs.
2. The poor state of facilities at Broadfield Stadium, Crawley (toilets, food, shop)
3. The possibility of organising transport so fans can attend away games.
4. The possibility to purchase mascot packages for the ladies game.
5. Loyalty points counting towards men’s loyalty scheme

Wembley FA Cup Semi-final 2023

The FAB were involved in planning flags and banners for Albion’s appearance at Wembley, which involved meetings with the club to discuss fan-led messages, funding and post match disposal.

Full Minutes of meetings

Full minutes of FAB activities may be found on the BHAFC website – Brighton & Hove Albion (brightonandhovealbion.com)