Livingston have issued an apology to their fans after a large number of Rangers supporters bought tickets in the home stand for last weekend's Premiership opener.
Rangers and Celtic have both been given three stands for their supporters during fixtures at the Tony Macaroni Arena since the Lions' arrival back into the top flight but the Livi faithful were disappointed that some Gers fans were able to purchase tickets for the main stand.
And club officials have released a statement acknowledging the error and have taken steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. From now on, fixtures in which the away side are given three stands will mean that only Livi season-ticket holders can purchase tickets for the main stand.
The statement read: "Livingston FC would like to go on record acknowledging the issues and complaints raised by our supporters following unacceptable scenes at Saturday’s cinch Premiership opener with Rangers.
Despite the best intentions from all at the club, particularly after discussions in the week leading up to the game with Police Scotland and our stewarding partner, we absolutely agree and appreciate that what transpired on Saturday fell way short of what we had aimed for and quite simply put, wasn’t good enough in respect to the position it left our own, valued supporters in.
Having been aware of issues in previous capacity crowd encounters, we weren’t naïve to the belief that opposing fans may try and purchase tickets in the home end. Despite our best attempts at putting measures in place to prevent – firstly at source, secondly at the turnstiles and thirdly within the ground, sadly, this wasn’t carried out to an acceptable level.
The club held productive talks with the LFL Supporters Trust, our SLO and DLO yesterday, focussing on how we can all work better together going forward, led by the football club, to deliver more positive outcomes.
Going forward, matches where we know our North, South and East Stands will be occupied fully with visiting fans, we will no longer offer any option to purchase tickets online for the home end. We appreciate the vast majority of our visiting support is well-behaved and a credit to the game, but unfortunately we need to deal with the irresponsible few.
Furthermore, ONLY current 2022/23 adult and adult concession season ticket holders will be able to buy tickets in the home end either in person or over the phone with said season ticket holders card number being taken against those purchases to ensure that there is a level of accountability for who is purchasing tickets and for where these people will be seated in the stand.
This will almost certainly see the club lose out on a portion of revenue from ticket sales for these games, but it is fundamental that the safety of our fans comes first and takes absolute priority over profit.
There is no getting away from the fact that we didn’t get it right on Saturday and the club wants to put on record our sincere apologies to those who had their matchday experience tarnished. We want all supporters and potential supporters to enjoy what the club has to offer. and admittedly, on Saturday, that wasn’t the case.
Putting these measures in place will hopefully alleviate the concerns raised by many of you at the weekend, and we do appreciate those of you who took the time to get in touch with your experiences to allow us to make sure we make this better for future sell out matches.
As ever, your support is hugely, hugely appreciated and we look forward to seeing you all back here for the clash with Hibernian on Saturday 13 th August."
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