Tranmere Rovers Football Club can confirm the plan for seating allocations for this weekend's League Two match at home to Walsall.
For the period in which we are required to limit our attendance in order to be able to ensure social distancing, if you are attending a game it is unlikely that you will be able to sit in your usual seat. We know that this may be frustrating but it is a necessary step in order to ensure we can keep you all safe and meet the requirements for the reopening of stadiums, so we ask you to bear with us.
Football stadiums have strict criteria for measuring the safe distance between supporters. This means that where we have individual supporters we need to leave seats empty around them, and only household or support bubbles can be permitted to sit in adjacent seats. As tickets are being allocated by ballot, it is not until the ballot is complete that we can try to allocate seats for all 2,000 winners in the draw; the seating arrangement is then dictated primarily by the need to get everyone seated on a socially distanced basis. It is a complicated and time-consuming process and as much as we would like to be able to, we are not able to consider requests for friends to be sat near each other, or for season ticket holders to be guaranteed their usual seat.
We have tried to ensure that all season ticket holders from within the same household, or season ticket holders who have advised us that they are in a support bubble with someone else, are sat together.
With this first ballot, we have also tried as far as possible to keep fans who usually sit in the Kop in that stand, but that is not possible for everyone. The Main Stand and Paddocks will be shut to spectators as those stands and concourses are required to be kept clear to ensure social distancing for players and match officials. Ballot winners who usually sit in those stands will mostly be seated in the Cowsheds, but there will be a very small number of fans in the Johnny King stand (this is necessary because of the larger than expected number of ballot winners who are not part of a support bubble).
You can help us by:
- Letting us know in advance for future matches if you are in a support bubble with someone who is not registered on our system at your address, by e mailing tickets@tranmererovers.co.uk;
- Checking the tickets set to you and those in your household/support bubble before matchday. If the unlikely event that you have not been seated together and that would cause a safeguarding issue (for example if an U14 or vulnerable adult is not sat next to a parent/guardian/carer from within their bubble please let us know as soon as possible prior to match day by e mailing tickets@tranmererovers.co.uk;
- Not swapping seats or asking to be moved to a different seat when you attend the match.
Every game we will learn more about how best to operate with fans back in the grounds so we will evaluate each game and look at what works and what doesn’t to improve the experience as much as possible while still keeping you safe.
Thank you for your patience and understanding in working with us to ensure that we can keep opening Prenton Park to supporters.