Arsenal fans pay £12,500 for debentures to skip 5-10 year season ticket waiting list
Arsenal fans desperate for a season ticket at the resurgent club are shelling out more than £12,000 for debentures that allow them to bypass the waiting list for a seat.
The Gunners’ return to Premier League title challenging form last season has seen demand swell for season tickets, even though prices range from £974 to £1,896.
But some with deep enough pockets have skipped the queue by buying debentures that come with the guarantee of a seat at Emirates Stadium.
And despite the hefty upfront cost, they are generating record levels of sales and enquiries via London-based Asset Match, the only platform for trading the Arsenal debentures.
Category A debentures have fetched £12,500 in recent months, an increase of more than 400 per cent on trades just a year ago. Some are now being listed with a reserve price of £21,000. They cost £1,500 when they were issued in the early 1990s.
Arsenal debentures are not season tickets in themselves but give the holder the right to buy one at additional cost. But with the club estimating the waiting list for season tickets to be 5-10 years, it has proved an appealing option for some fans.
In 2023, 30 debentures have changed hands and another four deals are in the process of completion. That is already more than the 23 trades Asset Match facilitated last year.
“Prior to this year there were only a handful of enquiries a week,” Warren Won, analyst at Asset Match, told City PM “But since New Year we’ve had 50-80 [a week], which is very unusual.”
“I think it speaks to a definite link to on-field performance,” said Asset Match founder and executive chairman Stuart Lucas. “This is not equity in the club; it’s the right to put a bum on a seat.”
Arsenal finished second in the Premier League last season and qualified for the Champions League for the first time since 2016. Excitement has built this summer with the £65m signing of Kai Havertz from Chelsea and an imminent British record £105m deal for West Ham and England midfielder Declan Rice.
What are Arsenal debentures?
The club issued A and B debentures in 1993 to help with the cost of redeveloping their Highbury stadium. Those are redeemable in 2143 for their initial cost of £1,500 and £1,100 respectively.
They issued C and D debentures to fund their 2006 move to Emirates Stadium which also run until 2143 but accrue interest and can be redeemed early in 2028 for £9,852 and £6,896.
The increased demand in recent months has created a sellers’ market, Lucas said. “People are getting wind of it. With the rising prices it is creating more sellers. We did have one lad whose fiancee found out he had two debentures. They want to put a deposit down on a house so I think he’ll now be watching Monday Night Football on Sky Sports instead.”
Asset Match is primarily a platform to trade shares in private companies and is the official marketplace for companies such as BrewDog and Arsenal’s North London rivals Tottenham Hotspur.