Swap air miles for Cup tickets!

Fans’ anger at semi-final seat giveaway

FA CUP sponsors Emirates are offering tickets for the semi-finals and final at Wembley — in exchange for 15,000 air miles.

The airline’s frequent flyers can also pick which part of Wembley they want to sit in.

Cup semi-finalists Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham will be allocated about 32,000 tickets each for the 90,000-capacity stadium — with 26,000 seats split between Club Wembley members and commercial partners.

Emirates have 250 tickets for each semi-final and the final — 125 in one club’s end, and 125 in the other. Yesterday supporters on social media took issue with the sponsors and the Football Supporters Federation have called for more tickets to go to true fans.

An FSF spokesman said: ‘ Too many tickets go to corporate sponsors and too few to matchgoing fans when it comes to football’s biggest games.

‘Last season the FSF successfully lobbied the FA to put 7,000 more FA Cup final tickets into the hands of match-going fans and we’ll continue to argue that a higher proportion of tickets should go to loyal, match-going supporters.’

Chelsea play Tottenham on Saturday, April 22 before City and Arsenal clash the following day. Arsenal, who are sponsored by Emirates, are chasing their only hope of silverware.

An Emirates spokesperson said: ‘Emirates is a long-standing supporter of football and through our partnership with the FA we are able to bring the world’s most prestigious cup competition closer to its fans across the nation as well as the rest of the globe.

‘As part of our sponsorship with the FA, we have a limited number of tickets which are available to our millions of Skywards members to purchase using their points, and is just one of many ways fans can access tickets to watch their favourite teams take part.’