The Europa League final will be played this week between Arsenal and Chelsea at the Baku Olympic Stadium in Azerbaijan.
And this English Derby has been the centre of debate for a number of weeks now.
The major concern for both the clubs is the fact that such an important game is being played in Azerbaijan which is miles away from London – the city where both the clubs are based.
And this distance has had severe impacts on the Europa League final with both clubs struggling to sell their allocated quota of tickets(around 6,000).
The biggest problem for this is the fact that there are no direct flights between London and Baku meaning the travelling fans will have to shell out a lot of money in connecting flights.
This is a major reason why many fans have chosen to stay away from the final. And now this issue is not contained within the Europa League final itself.
If reports are the be believed then this flight concern has but the F1 on high alert.
As per Reuters: “Azerbaijan Grand Prix promoters are considering laying on charter flights for next year’s Formula One race after soccer fans struggled to reach Baku for Wednesday’s Europa League final between Chelsea and Arsenal.”
“Next year, especially if we are back-to-back with any of the races, I will definitely try to organise more charter flights by ourselves and then try to sell them at cost to whoever is interested,” promoter Arif Rahimov told Reuters.
“That’s something we are really looking into, just to make it easy for all the spectators. It’s not something that we’ve done in the past but something I really want to do in the future.
“We’re talking about 3-4,000 Russians and then under 1,000 from the UK. That’s just regular ticket holders, I’m not talking about everyone else – the guests, hospitality suites etc,”
Initially, around 6,000 tickets each were given to Chelsea and Arsenal for the Europa League final and immediately there was a huge uproar regarding such a small amount of allocations.
But as days went by, both these clubs have struggled to sell off these tickets and now chances are that the Europa League final will be played in a largely empty stadium.
