Chelsea to offer racist fans ultimatum that includes trip to Auschwitz

Chelsea will implement an unconventional initiative to battle racism by offering supporters an ultimatum.

To promote a change in behavior and combat anti-Semitism, racist fans will be given the choice of an education course, which includes a trip to the World War II Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, or lose their season tickets.

"If you just ban people, you will never change their behavior," Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck said in an interview with Martin Lipton of The Sun.

"This policy gives them the chance to realize what they have done, to make them want to behave better.

"In the past, we would take them from the crowd and ban them, for up to three years.

"Now we say, 'You did something wrong. You have the option. We can ban you or you can spend some time with our diversity officers, understanding what you did wrong.'

"It is hard to act when a group of 50 or 100 people are chanting. That's virtually impossible to deal with or try to drag them out of the stadium. But if we have individuals that we can identify, we can act."

Chelsea, whose Russian billionaire owner Roman Abramovich is Jewish, were critical of their own fans following an incident in September 2017 against Tottenham when a section of supporters were involved in anti-Semitic chanting.

Related: Chelsea vows 'zero tolerance' over anti-Semitic Morata chant

At the time, Chelsea head of communications Steve Atkins said the club would bring about "the strongest possible action" against supporters who were found guilty of performing a chant which insinuated that Blues forward Alvaro Morata was anti-Semitic.