I don’t know if you heard, but Arsenal are in the FA Cup Final! Wacky, right? Anyway, a few of the business bits of Cup Final Day have been announced, to wit:
- Arsenal will be given 28,000 tickets for the Final, up from 25,00 in 2015. Chelsea’s allocation is the same.
- Arsenal’s 28,000 supporters will be sitting at the east end of Wembley.
Fancy yourself one of those 28,000? Don’t hold your breath, non-season-ticket-holding American Arsenal supporter, because here’s how that works. If you’re either an Away Scheme member or a Platinum or Gold member, you get rights to buy one ticket per membership automatically IF you’ve been to at least three away matches since the start of the 2014/15 season.
If you’re a Platinum or Gold member who has been to less than three but more than zero away matches in that same timeframe, you’ll be able to “register an interest” in buying a ticket. This does not guarantee you a ticket, but it does guarantee that you’ll be in the lottery to get them when the number of these registrations exceeds the number of available tickets, which it will. Are you a Red member? Are you not a member at all, but you’d still like a ticket? Sorry, no tickets for you. Don’t look so surprised.
If you’re not one of the three membership categories who can get tickets, but you still want to go, I guess there’s stubhub/seatgeek, or just roll up on the day and buy a ticket the old fashioned way, for way more than face value from a scalper for cash. I did that once, and it was an amazing day out - even if it is, to this day, the only FA Cup final Arsene Wenger has ever lost.