Chelsea FC have denied that tickets have been handed out to boost attendance for tonight’s Champions League match against Genk and insist that they are confident of a full house. They stated that about 1,000 tickets have been given to their foundation after some fans had campaigned for a boycott of the game because of higher ticket prices.
Chelsea FC have denied that tickets have been handed out to boost attendance for tonight’s Champions League match against Genk and insist that they are confident of a full house. They stated that about 1,000 tickets have been given to their foundation after some fans had campaigned for a boycott of the game because of higher ticket prices.
The Chelsea Supporters Group claims that prices for European group games have risen by 33 per cent this season and 66 per cent over the last two years taking the price to £40 a ticket. The group has asked for a response from the club as they did four years ago when prices dropped to less than £30 when fewer than 25,000 attended the match against Rosenberg for which tickets were £48 each.
Chelsea’s capacity is reduced by about 3,000 anyway for Champions League games because of broadcasting and other considerations. The club blamed insufficient time to market tickets for the 33,920 attendance against Bayer Leverkusen last month and deny fans’ claims that 6,000 tickets were handed out, saying that the figure was close to 1,000.
Chelsea are not the only club to have experienced some lack of interest from fans towards watching weaker teams in a group. Attendances are under some pressure generally with the tickets sold figure of over 60,000 for Arsenal v. Sunderland on Sunday looking more like 55,000 in the ground and the corporate tiers in particular thinly populated.