Since 2006 a ticket exchange has been run for the club by an external company, viagogo, but for 2014/15 it is moving ‘in house’ as our partnership with viagogo comes to an end.

The new Chelsea FC Official Ticket Exchange will be a safe, legal and simple way for a season ticket holder not attending a fixture for any reason to pass the seat to another fan and recover the cost. It will ensure Stamford Bridge is as full as possible, it will help supporters without tickets to not miss out unnecessarily, and it will reimburse the season ticket holder with the full pro-rata cost the match represents in the season ticket price. In practice that is the total price divided by 19, the number of home league games in the season.

This contrasts with the previous viagogo scheme where a deduction was made from the sum the season ticket holder received back, which was a charge for using their service.

The new Chelsea FC version will not cost a season ticket holder anything to use.

The chance to purchase tickets from the exchange will be open to any season ticket holder and club member and there will also be a version of the ticket exchange open to annual hospitality members. However it would clearly be unfair to other supporters who bought seats before a match sold out if a fan later purchasing from the Ticket Exchange paid an amount less than the normal cost.

Therefore each ticket available from the new Ticket Exchange will cost the regular seat price for a member of the purchaser’s age in that section of the stadium, plus the standard £1.50 booking fee charged when buying any match ticket for any game at Stamford Bridge.

This also contrasts favourably with the previous viagogo operation, which added an additional amount onto the normal cost of purchasing a ticket, once again as a charge for using their service.

In the new scheme it will not cost any more to buy a ticket from the Ticket Exchange than it does to buy the same category ticket from the box office. In both cases, the £1.50 booking fee covers the cost of administering the ticket purchase.

As season tickets at Stamford Bridge are for entry to Premier League games only (season ticket holders have the opportunity to buy their seat for games in other competitions, but can choose not to if they wish), the Ticket Exchange will operate for Premier League games only. Tickets can be sold on from 42 days before the fixture.

If a spare seat offered via the Ticket Exchange has no taker, there will be no money reimbursed but no charge to the season ticket holder, with the seat for that game remaining available for the season ticket holder to use or offer again on the Ticket Exchange at a later date.

As the cost of a match when it is calculated as a percentage of a season ticket’s price is in almost all cases less than the regular price a member pays for a seat in the same area of the ground, there will be additional revenue generated by season ticket seats sold through the Ticket Exchange.

The aim of this scheme is to ensure as many of our fans can attend a match as possible and for every seat at Stamford Bridge to be occupied. It most definitely is not to generate additional money for the club on top of our regular season ticket and individual match ticket sales.

Therefore all extra money raised by season ticket seats being sold on at the regular members’ price will be donated to the Chelsea FC Foundation, the club’s charity organisation which uses the power of sport to bring about positive changes in people's lives and their communities.

The leading community programme in the world of football, the Foundation engaged more than 750,000 people home and abroad last season, and operates more than 500 projects each week providing schemes to promote sport, social inclusion, health, education and equality. Our total community investment is more than £5 million per year, including more than £3m developing grassroots sporting opportunities with a further £905,000 invested in UK social inclusion programmes.

At the end of each season the club will announce the sum of money raised and donated straight into the Foundation’s funds by the Ticket Exchange, as well as the number of tickets exchanged. The tables below display the price figures involved for each ticket category.

The Ticket Exchange will be available for fans to use from early August onwards.

The new Chelsea FC Ticket Exchange is a fair and straightforward way to ensure tickets do not go to waste, and financially it is an improvement for all supporters who use the service.