by Adriana Hamacher

OP/ED: A most extraordinary FA Cup final ended on Saturday with Chelsea creating history, winning their first League and Cup Double, but Portsmouth’s famous Pompey Chimes were extra resonant because of the large number of empty seats at Wembley Stadium.

The FA could sell out Wembley several times for a cup final, the many ticketless supporters would have done pretty much anything to attend, but it seems the FA are being held financial hostage because of the enormous cost of building the state-of-the-art national stadium which was finished a year late.

In order to claw back some of the revenue lost to the delay, there is a policy to sell corporate tickets in large quantities: 17,000 out of the stadium’s 90,000 capacity seats. Some of these are a whooping £20,000 a pop – not something your average fan could afford. Instead, many of these seats are used by companies looking to entertain corporate clients and they don’t always take them up.

Even the clients who do make it, often have a half hearted interest in the actual event. On Saturday, when the second half of the Cup Final kicked off, almost 90 percent of the seats visible on TV were empty – corporate occupants who did attend were obviously still partaking of the free hospitality in the bar.

If clients don’t take tickets up, corporations are under no obligation to notify the FA or return the ticket to the body so that it can be sold in the normal way. Perhaps they should be? Alternatively, there are plenty of charities to which a ticket could be donated. Tickets could also be auctioned or given to deserving employees. There are also precedents (the Vancouver Olympics, this year’s FIFA World Cup) for sporting bodies to set up their own resale sites.  

On emotive occasions such as when Wembley plays host to the FA cup final and audiences around the world tune in to watch the UK’s finest, the FA has a responsibility to show the event to its best effect - and that means occupied seats.