As Robert Exley pointed out in the first of his excellent Cup Final articles earlier today, Arsenal’s trio of Cup Final appearances from 1978 to 1980 helped the club build a global following which has steadily increased ever since. There are very few corners of the world which do not now have a Gooner presence.

The Gooner has known this for years because we’ve always had a proportion of our mail order subscribers based overseas and at one stage were shipping issues to over 50 countries. Not surprisingly though, this number has been dwindling in recent years as the rise of the internet has made access to Arsenal content so much more accessible, not to mention the ever increasing postage costs.

However, we are not going to let small obstacles like those get in the way of spreading The Gooner word far and wide and for the last few years have offered digital subscriptions at a single low cost price regardless of where you are in the world.

To promote this and also bring The Gooner to people who may never have seen the printed issue, twelve months ago we experimented with giving free access to our Cup Final special issue via The Gooner App for people attending Cup Final parties in various locations around the world.

The promotion relied on Apple’s “By Place” functionality (which is why it’s unfortunately only available on Apple devices) which, in conjunction with systems developed by our digital publishing partner, Exact Editions, enables anyone within a 50 metre radius of hotspots chosen by us to be able to download issues of the fanzine through our app for free.

It was such a success that we decided to repeat the exercise a year on and, at the time of writing, are well on our way to reaching our target of 100 different locations globally – from Auckland, New Zealand via Australia, India, Ghana, Egypt and right the way across North America, as well as selected pubs in the Highbury area which we know are holding Cup Final events. Click here for the full list of participating venues and instructions on how to take advantage of the offer.

It’s not too late to be added to the list, although time is obviously running out with the big day now less than 48 hours away. Email us as soon as possible at [email protected] with details of the venue (an exact address is helpful), along with the name and Twitter details of the group running the event and we’ll do our best to get everything set-up in time.

In the meantime, our thanks to all the local supporters groups who have got involved and are promoting the offer to their members. We hope as many people as possible will be able to download and enjoy the issue. Most important of all though, let’s hope we all enjoy the day!

Be sure to follow us on Twitter for details of future promotions.