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I'm sure that many of you will have received an email this morning announcing "Seat Unique" as a new EFC partner - they will be handling the match-by-match "Premium" offerings at the new stadium, and I've seen a lot of negative comments online already so thought I'd just make a few comments/observations.

The seats that this involves are seats that are already in "Premium" areas of the ground, and all involve some sort of "add-on" with varying levels of food & drink and obviously "prime views" from your seat in the stadium.

They are not involved in the "general admission" (ticket/seat only) side of things - I've already seen people/Members on the waiting list complaining that EFC are "selling these tickets to external companies" and denying them the chance to see a match. In fact it's the opposite - this is actually giving them MORE opportunities to watch a match, but it's obviously more expensive (prices are still TBC).

The only "complaint" that could really be made regarding this is about the number of seats that have been allocated as Premium vs General Admission in the new stadium (and then further to that, the split in numbers within Premium between the Premium Season Tickets and these Match-by-Match tickets) but the fact that all seasonal Premium seats have sold out would tend to indicate that they've pretty close on the numbers - especially as they also include a 3-year commitment. Hopefully they have got the numbers right and we have a full stadium every week, no matter who has paid what for their seat!

So anyway, when I got the email this morning I clicked through to see the options and saw there were no prices so (as I'm thinking I might be able to do some kind of Premium now and then as a special occassion) I filled in the online form to "register my interest", and within 2 hours I'd got a phone call from Seat Unique informing me of their excitement at the new partnership and of how it works (much like other similar companies) - once the fixtures are announced on Wednesday there will be the ability to click into each fixture and see what Premium seating is available for each game and then take it from there. He wasn't able to tell me any prices yet, but obviously said they will all be there on Wednesday. They then sent an email to confirm this - all very polite, professional and positive.

They seem to have lots of experience with other clubs (and music too) so hopefully we've made a good choice with the partnership - from my own personal experience and understanding of how it all works, so far so good - I still have no idea whether I will be able to afford a Premium seat or not, and I'm sure that lots of our fans will be absolutely nauseous at this kind of thing, but - for better or worse - that's the world we're now in and the new owners need to "sweat the asset" as best they can, so let's hope they do the right things and get us back to winning things with a full stadium each week, as a lot of people are going to be paying a lot of money in the hope of seeing that happen!