Privacy

Privacy Notice

Aberdeen Football Club Limited is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as ‘AFC’ ‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our’ or ‘The Club’ in this privacy notice). We are committed to protecting your privacy and security. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website, and/or subsites, and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how AFC collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you: – (including but not limited to) sign up to our newsletter, purchase products or services through the website, or browse the Club’s retail store subsite.

Please read this privacy notice carefully – by accessing, browsing, or utilising this website and associated sites, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to this privacy notice in its entirety.

This privacy notice was last updated on 19th December 2023. In order to comply with the law and to meet our changing business requirements, our policies and procedures are constantly under review. From time to time, we may modify, alter, or update this privacy notice. Any revisions to this privacy notice shall be published on our website, and we encourage you to check back regularly to stay informed of any updates.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Our Details

This privacy notice explains the use of your personal data by Aberdeen Football Club Limited (company number SC005364). Registered office is Pittodrie Stadium, Pittodrie Street, Aberdeen, AB24 5QH.

Any personal data provided to, or gathered by, our website is controlled by AFC. If you have any queries on any aspect of this privacy notice, wish to obtain details of the current Data Protection Officer for Aberdeen Football Club Limited, or would like to exercise any of your rights referred to below, please contact us by email at dataprotection@afc.co.uk or by post at the address below.

Aberdeen Football Club
Pittodrie Stadium
Pittodrie Street
Aberdeen
AB24 5QH

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO and would be grateful if you would please contact us in the first instance.

Third Party Links

Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notices/policies of every website you visit.

What Personal Data do we Collect?

We collect personal data or information from you when you provide it to us directly and through your use of our website. Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. Depending on the purpose of your activity or interaction with us, we may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

Identity Data (first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth, gender and passport number)
Contact Data (billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers)
Financial Data (bank account and payment card details)
Transaction Data (details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services that you have purchased from us)
Technical Data (internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our website and subsites)
Profile Data (username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, any feedback and survey responses)
Usage Data (information about how you use our website, products and services)
Marketing and Communications Data (your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences)
Medical/Health Data (information relating to health – limited to certain individuals)

We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website page.

How is your Personal Data Collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including (but not limited to) through:

Direct interactions – You may give us your identity, contact and financial data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

- purchase products or services
- create an account on our website
- subscribe to our services
- request marketing to be sent to you
- enter a competition, promotion or survey
- provide feedback or contact us
- attend a match or event at one of our premises (such data collected could be audio and visual related through CCTV, bodycam recordings, photographs and other recordings for broadcasting and publicity purposes)
- leave products in your AFC shop basket or do not complete other transactions on the AFC website and/or subsites
- register for an AFC account via a social media platform
- apply for any vacancies within the Club
- participate in any tournaments organised by the Club

Automated technologies or interactions – As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies.

How do we Use your Personal Data?

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a lawful basis for processing your personal data although we will obtain your consent before sending third party marketing communications to you. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

We have set out below in table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the lawful bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified our legitimate interests where appropriate. Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific lawful basis we are relying on to process your personal data, where more than one basis has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity

Category of data

Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest

To register you as a new customer

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

Performance of a contract with you

To process and deliver any orders/purchases your place with us including:

(a) Manage payments, fees and charges

(b) Collect and recover money owed to us

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(d) Transaction

(e) Marketing and Communications

(a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us)

To manage our relationship with you which will include:

(a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy notice

(b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(d) Marketing and Communications

(a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

(c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services)

To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(d) Usage

(e) Marketing and Communications

(a) Performance of a contract with you

(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business)

To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business re-organisation or group restructuring exercise)

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

To deliver relevant website content to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(d) Usage

(e) Marketing and Communications

(f) Technical

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)

To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences

(a) Technical

(b) Usage

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)

To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(d) Usage

(e) Profile

(f) Marketing and Communications

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

We may use your data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third Party Marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

Opting Out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time. Where you opt-out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result a product/service purchase.

You can change your marketing preferences via your account which you can access by clicking here.

Cookies

We use cookies to track your use of our website. A cookie is a small file which is sent to your browser and stored on your computer’s hard disc. They help us understand where we can improve the information and services provided.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookies policy here.

CCTV

Our grounds and properties, internal and external, are monitored by CCTV at all times, and sometimes during events using body worn cameras. These systems are in place for the purposes of crime prevention, public safety and operational purposes.

We retain recorded information for a maximum of 35 days, unless there is a specific reason to keep any footage for a longer period of time, be it in relation to a complaint, health & safety issue, or a potential criminal offence or prosecution.

Disclosure of your Personal Data

We may share your personal data with other organisations in the following circumstances:

if the law or a public authority says we must share the personal data
if your personal data is included in any images or videos taken by us at any event, we may share this for promotional and/or journalistic purposes across all of our own media channels and to external media outlets
we may be required to share personal data with statutory or regulatory authorities and organisations to comply with statutory obligations. Such organisations include The Football Authorities, Health & Safety Executive, Disclosure Scotland, Police Scotland etc
if we need to share personal data in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (this includes providing personal data to others for the purposes of preventing fraud and reducing credit risk)
if false or inaccurate data is provided by you and fraud is identified or suspected, your details may be passed to fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information
to third parties if we choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets

We employ third party suppliers to provide services, including processing payments, delivering orders etc. These suppliers may process personal data on our behalf as ‘processors’. We require all third-party suppliers to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We do not allow our third-party suppliers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Securing your Personal Data

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

How Long will you Retain my Personal Data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or other requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Children

We recommend that parents supervise their children while they are online. There are various control tools available for online services that we advise parents to utilise in order to create a child-friendly online environment for their children.

If you are under the age of 13, you may register to receive newsletters and other information but only with parental or guardian consent. You may only make purchases on this website if you are aged 13 or over or, if under 13, have received parental or guardian consent. We are dedicated to the protection of children’s personal data and we do not actively market to children under the age of 13. We endeavour to limit the amount of personal data which we collect from users who are under 13.

Users who are under 13 must always ask their parent or guardian for permission before they:-

email us, or ask us to email anything to them/another user under 13
send any information to us
enter any competition that requires information about them/another user under 13 or offers a prize
offer to agree to buy anything online

Our privacy notice for younger users can be found here. It supplements our main Privacy Notice, and we encourage parents and guardians of younger users to familiarise themselves with both notices.

Your Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data as follows:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:
– If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
– Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
– Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
– You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights above you can do so by submitting a request in writing to us at Aberdeen Football Club Limited, Pittodrie Stadium, Pittodrie Street, Aberdeen AB24 5QH or e-mailing dataprotection@afc.co.uk.

If making a request to us, please include your name, e-mail address, postal address and your date of birth. This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Any requests received will be considered under applicable data protection legislation. If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk.

Consent

By using our website, you consent to collection and use of any information you provide to us by Aberdeen Football Club Limited for the purposes described above. If we decide to change our privacy notice, we will post those changes on this page. We recommend you re-visit this page periodically to check for changes. We endeavour to take all reasonable steps to protect your personal data including the use of encryption technology but cannot guarantee the security of any data you disclose online. You accept the inherent security implications of sending information over the Internet and will not hold us responsible for any breach of security unless we have been negligent.

Disclaimer

Aberdeen Football Club Limited recognises we have legal obligations in terms of the collection and use of personal data made available to us. This website is provided on an “AS IS” basis and we exclude all warranties or representations of any kind with respect to this website or its contents. In particular, we do not warrant or represent that the information contained on this website is accurate or up to date.

The contents of this website are designed to comply with Scottish Law. You may be viewing the website in a market in which we do not commonly sell our goods. We cannot be held responsible for non-compliance with any local advertising or other laws in relation to this website or its contents.