Secure your place at the JobServe Community Stadium for the Christmas fixtures.
In an effort to ensure that only Colchester United supporters attend the games here in north Essex, a three match multi-match permit will be available to purchase and is the only way for non Seasonal Permit holders to attend these three matches.
The permits will be available to purchase on colutickets.com no later than 10am on Friday 11th December.
Explaining the process, and the challenges that the club face with restricted attendances, Chairman Robbie Cowling said: "Our systems worked really well on Saturday and we are now ready to sell tickets in much smaller batches."
"For a number of reasons, we are not ready to sell single match tickets yet. For example, we really must make sure those that attend are Colchester United fans and selling more than a single ticket goes a long way to ensuring that is the case.
"So with Christmas fast approaching, we are going to make our next three home games available via a Multi-Match Permit.
"The permit will provide access to the fixtures against Morecambe on Saturday 19th December, Cheltenham Town on Tuesday 29th December and Tranmere Rovers on Saturday 2nd January.
"Anyone who buys the three game multi-match permit will qualify themselves to buy additional games as they become available.
"For example; when we make the Cambridge game available, those who bought a multi-match permit will be able to purchase the game as a single purchase.
"At that time, we would also hope to make those games available to fans with other historical data that proves they are Colchester United fans.
"This is clearly a lot of development and whether we do it or not will depend on the availability of tickets.
"Hopefully we will be in Tier One before long which would permit 4,000 to attend."
Bubbles
It has been made easy for fans to create or join a bubble when they purchase a permit because many will want to purchase separately but sit together as a bubble.
Therefore, it’s vital that supporters know the exact name of the bubble they want to create/join when they make their purchase.
Bubble names are created when a bubble is being created but these are not exactly memorable so fans are allowed to edit them to allow for more memorable names.
Therefore, please agree a bubble name with those in a bubble and share the name between the group before purchases are made.
If a permit is purchased between the 17th and 19th of December, then the purchaser will not be able to join a bubble until after the Morecambe game on the 19th. After the 19th, they will be able to do so online.
Match Permits In General
All Match Permit sales are to be made online apart from those being purchased by disabled fans who will need to call the ticket office and those buying hospitality packages who need to call the sales office.
Every CUFC Match Permit holder will be given a priority number which will relate to the order they are purchased in and using the priority number may come in to effect if there is a situation where the number of fans that are allowed to physically attend is less than the number of Permits sold.
For example we may sell 2,000 Match permits but have to restrict attendees to just 1,000.
Permit Holders get notified 48 hours prior to a fixture whether they can attend the game or not.
This will have been decided by the restrictions imposed at that time and the Permit holder’s priority. If they can attend, then a two stage process will be required before the tickets are sent to them:
Stage One
An email message that contains a link to a Covid-19 notice and a questionnaire which they must complete will be sent out.
The notice will inform them of the current rules and guidelines for the stadium and the questionnaire will ask them questions that relate to their suitability for attending a game.
For example, it will ask if they have had certain symptoms that are known to indicate they may have the coronavirus.
They will need to acknowledge the notice and pass the questionnaire to progress to stage two.
Stage Two
An email message with their Print@Home match ticket attached and a document that will provide clear instructions on how to arrive at the stadium, use the stadium and leave the stadium will be sent.
The scanners we will be using will be able to scan the tickets from a smart phone so there is no need to print the ticket if you can use this method as an alternative.
The actual seat that the fan is allocated will be done on a match by match basis and the fan might find themselves in a different seat for every game.
If for any reason we have to move them to another section and the price for a seat in that section is priced lower than what they have paid, we will top-up a Privilege Card with the difference.
Access Denial
If the Permit holder is denied access to the stadium due to Covid-19 restrictions, they will be provided with an email notice explaining why they could not attend and the message will contain a method of accessing the live iFollow stream free of charge.
They will also receive a top-up to a Privilege Card that is equal to the difference between the cost of their ticket and the cost of iFollow.
If the Permit holder was allowed to attend but fails stage one of the process above then they will be sent an email notice explaining why they could not attend and the message will contain a method of accessing the live iFollow stream free of charge.