Manchester United Fans’ Forum – Minutes Friday 4th December 2015 Old Trafford

Forum Members Peter David Phil Peter Keith Josh Jared Ruairi Roger Adrian Matthew Gaynor Lindsay Alan Andy

Rickard Blackledge Downs Evans Udale Llewellyn Winder McMenanin Muckle Short Harris Bagnall Roe Thomas Whitehead

Over 65s Representative Season Ticket Holder MUDSA Representative MUSC Representative (Cardiff & South Vale Branch) MUSC Representative (High Peak Branch) Season Ticket Holder Manchester/Salford/Trafford resident ST Holder 16-21 Representative Executive Club Member Official Member Official Member Season Ticket Holder MUSC Representative (Nottingham Branch) Official Member Family Stand Representative

Club and Foundation Officials Ed John Richard David Sam John Guy Chelsea Philip

Woodward Alexander Arnold French Kelleher Shiels Smith Mould Townsend

Topic

Executive Vice Chairman Club Secretary Group Managing Director Director of Venue Head of Ticketing and Membership Operations Chief Executive, Manchester United Foundation Director of Venue Operations T&MS Comms & Admin Team Leader Director of Communications

Speaker

Topic Notes Apologies  Lindsay Roe (MUSC Rep)  Phil Downs

1. Introductions / Apologies

2. Minutes (last meeting)

3. Official Club Sanctions

RA

RA

DF

Introductions  2 new Forum members not in attendance in September − Matthew Harris (Official Member Rep) − Jared Winder (Local Rep) 

Note: we will ask our 2 new reps to have their photo taken at the end of the meeting to add pictures on the website.



RA welcomed those members attending for the first time.



The Club is looking to introduce official club sanctions for offences at home and away games; these sanctions will be communicated to supporters so that everyone is aware of their existence, and what the appeals process is.

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We have liaised with some supporter groups and the FSF (Football Supporters Federation) on the proposed sanctions, and their feedback has been incorporated.

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As a next step, we wanted to share the proposed sanctions document with yourselves, and to consider any feedback before we finalise and

Topic

Speaker

Topic Notes publish, therefore I will arrange for the document to be emailed to you before Christmas.

4. Provision for Disabled Supporters



The Club confirmed that the introduction of this process will be used to demonstrate that the Club is tackling bad behaviour to other clubs, especially those that reduce our allocation.

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All Premier League clubs are now required to comply with the Accessible Stadia Guide by August 2017; the Accessible Stadia Guide is a good practice guide for the design of sport facilities to meet the needs of disabled spectators.

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To comply with the Accessible Stadia Guide, changes to Old Trafford that are required include increasing the number of wheelchair spaces from 120 to 282 (and a seat for the carer/personal assistant for each wheelchair user); additionally 282 amenity or ‘easy access’ seats are also required (currently 105), again with a seat, where necessary, for carers/personal assistants.

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The Club is currently working with architects and a quantity surveyor to evaluate options to increase the number of seats for disabled supporters, whilst trying to minimise the reduction in overall capacity and impact on Season Ticket holders.

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In addition, the Club are also undertaking a full review of disabled policies & processes to ensure that they are non-discriminatory.

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Historically policies have been set by MUDSA (the Manchester United Disabled Supporters Association), who also currently run part of the ticket operation for disabled supporters; however the Club will need to directly manage all ticketing policies & processes going forward.

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As part of this review, a consultation programme with key stakeholders is underway (kicked-off in September with an online survey sent to all known disabled supporters as well as STHs and Official Members).

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This consultation questionnaire will be sent to Forum members in the coming days.

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In a recent survey sent to all Official Members, 85% of people stated they would be likely or very likely to take up the option to automatically renew their Official Membership if the option were introduced:

DF

o o o o

5. Official Membership Auto-Renewal

SK

48% Very Likely 37% Fairly Likely 11% Not Very Likely 4% Not At All Likely

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Based on this, we intend to implement an automatic renewal scheme for the 2016/17 season.

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All Official Members will be sent full information as soon as it is confirmed; specifically regarding the dates we will take payment.

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The option to opt-out of an automatic renewal payment will be available for those supporters who do not wish to use it, and payment will be processed from the card details used for 2015/16 (the opt-out process will be extremely simple and available online or over the phone).

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The Club was asked to consider introducing a similar auto-renewal system for Season Tickets. DF stated that we have already looked into this, but felt it pragmatic to test with Official Membership first.

Topic

6. Congestion on Matchday (Update)

Speaker

Topic Notes 

Some forum members stated that while many people are used to autorenewal in many areas of their lives, care should be taken, in particular with Senior supporters, as it may be a significant amount in pensioners’ budgeting. Club to take comments on-board and reflect in comms.



This issue was raised last time in relation to the footbridge at the South West corner of the ground. The Club has deployed extra staff in that area and members agreed it seemed to be making a big difference. The Club has continued to monitor this area each Matchday. We do not have any safety related concerns in this area. Stewards have been re-briefed to emphasise the importance of maintaining a gangway for spectators to pass through. Our footage shows that the passage of spectators over the railway bridge is the main factor causing congestion in this area and not supporters waiting for the players.

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GS responded to concerns raised about vehicles exiting from W1 and W2 car parks by saying the Club will monitor how vehicles merge at the junction of W1 and W2, particularly in relation to pedestrians present in the same area.

GS

Moscow, played Wed 21 October:  As confirmed in the last meeting we arranged for a portable biometric service to be on site at Old Trafford, with the Club covering the cost of the additional charge of £50 per person that is normally applied for this service. This service was extended to two days after it took longer to process each application than originally advised by the Russian Embassy.

7. European Away DF Games (Update)

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6 coaches were arranged with our Official Carrier, Aeroflot, to take supporters from the city centre to the ground. Although all 6 coaches were fully booked, not many people used them for the trip to the stadium but were heavily utilised for the return journey.

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Following the reconnaissance trip no suitable location was found for a ticket collection point. Therefore the decision was taken to send all tickets out to supporters, and we covered the cost of posting by Royal Mail registered delivery. Note: post-match, credits have only been allocated to supporters who have provided their Visa/Passport to the ticket office.

Wolfsburg (Tuesday 8 December):  We understand that the majority of supporters will be travelling and staying in Hannover or Berlin, due to Wolfsburg being a small town 

We have therefore arranged a collection point in a shopping centre, 5 minutes’ walk from the main station in (Wolfsburg Hauptbahnhof; on the Hanover–Berlin railway and it is the last Intercity-Express stop running east before Stendal or Berlin-Spandau); supporters can travel here from Hannover and Berlin, and walk to the stadium in around 10 minutes.

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Free train travel will be available for supporters on production of their match ticket, 50km around Wolfsburg. Note: this does not apply for trips to Hannover and Berlin, and our exchange voucher is not classed as a ticket.

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There were some concerns about supporters being held back after the game, leading to people missing their last train. However, we do not anticipate there will be any supporters held back (and understand that should there be a hold back, the trains will be delayed accordingly).

Topic

Speaker

Topic Notes MU Foundation Fundraising  As traditional ways of obtaining funding is becoming more difficult to identify, one area we would like to investigate is how we can engage the fan base more and get them more involved in raising funds to assist the work of the Foundation. 

Presently we have a raffle that we run throughout the lounges on match day. We also open up Trek’s to Fans; we also occasionally get donations from individuals. It would be great to work with the Forum in order to identify where we can gain more connection from a Foundation point of view.

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JS asked Forum members to send on any ideas they have for fundraising

Delivery  We are continually developing, creative, interactional programmes to deliver to the children/young people we come into contact with. We are working on creating social education modules to present to the young people. These will cover Employability, Money Skills, Discrimination, Health and Well Being, Community, Healthy Relationships. These will be delivered by trusted staff, during football sessions.

8. MU Foundation JS (Update)



These workshops are instrumental in assisting our young people in making the right decisions they need to make to be successful.

MP House of Commons Dinner  One major element of the Foundation’s remit is to make people aware of the work we do, so that it can act as an influencing factor in securing more work. For the 4th time we held a dinner in the House of Commons to inform a select group of MP’S about our work. The dinner was well attended, in all we had 8 MP’S, 5 were from Manchester, 1 from Northern Ireland, and 2 with bigger remits. We were also supported by Aon, and a local head teacher from one of our schools. 

The event was extremely well received and all present were suitably impressed with the depth, scope and volume of work that we did.

Relationship with GM Police  As the social landscape continues to change, new ways of servicing that landscape needs to be found. We continue to look for ways to work with the police. GMP believes the best and most cost-effective way of policing is to work with communities to look after communities. We have taken the lead in creating a new programme which creates a partnership between ourselves and the police, which in turn will help to curb urban crime. Santa Run  JS invited Forum members to enter the annual Santa Run.

9. Members' Questions Q: A few years ago the re-introduction of the name 'Manchester United Football Club' in place of 'Manchester United' was discussed, has there been any progress on this issue? a.

Manchester United name

RA



As we said at the February meeting, this is an ongoing and very complex process and involves investigating a huge number of international licensing deals. Whatever happens, it will not be a quick process but members of the Forum can be assured that we will keep them updated when there is progress.

Topic

Speaker

Topic Notes 

The Club sells over 10 million articles a year with the logo on. To change that is an enormous task.

Q: Why was it the VIP tickets were available for Champions League away game against CSKA Moscow to 'ordinary' fans, but for Wolfsburg, where the club received 200 VIP tickets there was no option to apply for them.

b.

European away VIP tickets

SK

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Unfortunately, at the time of applications opening, we had no information from Wolfsburg regarding the VIP tickets.

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However, we will look to ensure we have this option available for future games should we progress.

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It is worth noting that there are no ‘VIP’ match tickets. Those that have become known as ‘VIP’ match tickets are, in fact, officially referred to as Category 1 tickets – the requirement for which is that they are situated between the penalty boxes. They may be, as a result, surrounded by home team fans.

Q: Is it not possible to not run ballots and cup scheme tickets on the different days. We have had Wolfsburg and Watford away and cup scheme for PSV all taken at the same time, I use 4 credit cards now but the cup scheme takes 12 hits due to the fact not all tickets are in the same block. (Is it not possible to take the branch ticket payment for cup scheme as 1 payment the day before the cup ticket scheme is run, the branch tickets are approx £1,400 for each up game) Watford took 20 hits with loyalty, execs and standard pot needing to be segregated and Wolfsburg 10 due to the number of points different members of the branch have this season. Credit cards are usually good for 10 hits in 24 hours, so there is a chance that if everything was applied on the same day we could get stop orders on at least 1 card and subsequently miss out on domestic away games or euro aways.

c.

Timings of cup payment and away ballots

d.

Matchday road closures

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The timings we have put in place for cup payments are so they fall almost exactly 4 weeks prior to the game. This means Season Ticket holders are not making payment for their tickets too far in advance – a system developed following feedback from ST holders.

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European away game applications now also open much earlier than they have done in previous seasons, following feedback through the Fans’ Forum that supporters needed to know as far in advance as possible whether they had a ticket in order to arrange travel before prices were increased.

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Unfortunately this is a bespoke and automated process, and it is not currently possible to isolate segments of our database, to process transactions at different times – we will consider this with any future system enhancements.

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That being said, we appreciate that this can mean a large number of payments are being taken on one day, and will consider this when putting together future sales arrangements (i.e. we will try and avoid multiple card transactions on a single day).

SK

GS

Q: Could the club liaise with councils or the highway agency to try and delay road closures on a night match until the majority of football traffic has got through certain areas. This is becoming an increasing problem adding on 2 hours or more for supporters getting home and is putting more and more people off travelling to night matches. 

The Club does monitor the impact of road closures on matchday traffic. Where possible we do communicate with councils and highways

Topic

Speaker

Topic Notes agencies and have delayed road closures e.g. M56 post the Ipswich game. However this relies on the co-operation of third parties and will depend on the scale and location of the works in question. Anything in the immediate vicinity of the stadium is obviously closely monitored. However if you have a specific example of a location and date when you felt further co-operation would have been beneficial then please bring this to our attention and we will endeavour to factor into our planning for future games. 

The Club agreed to speak to the Highways Agency to try and minimise the disruption for travelling fans, especially on the M6.

Q: Can you explain in simple and honest terms how some people with 3 European away credits got 2 further credits in the Wolfsburg ballot whereas others with 3 credits were unsuccessful and only got 1 further credit. Why should luck play such a huge part in the allocation of credits?

e.

European away credits

10. Any Other Business

SK

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Credits only used to be allocated to supporters who were successful in the ballot, but this generated complaints from people who applied and were unsuccessful.

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To make this fairer on both those unlucky in the ballot and those who travel to the game, there are now two credits awarded (one for making an application and one for attending the game).

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There is still an element of luck (like the example used in the question), and our view remains that additional credits should be allocated to those who actually attend the game

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This ensures priority is still given to those who make the trip for future games, which is what the system was put in place for, but also means those who apply and are unsuccessful receive more credits than those supporters who do not apply.

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The ballot allocation process used for European away games is widely accepted as a fair and transparent process.

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Please note this process is fully documented on manutd.com

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Members agreed that the current system was fair, in that it rewarded fans who make the trip abroad.

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In relation to Thomas Cook Sports (TCS), there were a few questions and to confirm, for Wolfsburg, anyone could apply, but TCS prioritized the applications that had the qualifying number of credits – this process is stated on the TCS website; going forward the same process will be used; supporters who book and travel with TCS receive 2 credits.

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The Club is seeking to streamline the process by which fans with General Admission tickets can order and receive disabled parking facilities; the Ticket Office will take on full responsibility for all such issues from next season.

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DF undertook to check what the process is for Under 16 ST holders in the Family Stand to have their names on the board on the concourse.

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One member raised the possibility of naming the stands in line with their old names (Scoreboard End, Stretford End etc.) RA said that the look and feel of signage etc. is being looked at but made no commitment on renaming stands.

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RA was asked about the new security measures, introduced in the wake of the Paris attacks. Fans are being urged not to bring bags and

RA

Topic

Speaker

Topic Notes enhanced searching will take place. These are measures the Club has been investigating for nearly two years now. Members expressed their support for the efforts the Club is making in this area. 

Date of Next Meeting: Tuesday 2nd February 2016 (Stoke Match Day), 1pm, Old Trafford