Norwich City football club has been forced to apologise over the heavy-handed way it dealt with a teenage fan who had posted pictures of a new kit on Twitter ahead of its official launch.
In a marketing own goal, the club called in the police after 17-year-old die-hard fan and season ticket holder Chris Brown accessed images and posted links online, prompting an investigation of breaches of the Computer Misuse Act.
After a Twitter storm derided the decision to tackle the fan, a home and away supporter for more than five years, as a criminal, the club has backed down and said the police will take no further action.
It admitted the youngster’s actions were “prompted by his enthusiasm and passion for the club and not by any malicious intent,” adding that it was “pleased to confirm no further action will be taken by the club or police over the matter”.
I just want to move on and look forward to Saturday’s game against Blackburn
“The club also recognises and has listened to the very strong feedback from supporters criticising our initial handling of the matter and this is something we have acknowledged to Mr Brown and his family, and apologised for,” the club said in a statement.
Brown has also apologised, saying he was “just excited about seeing the new kit”.
“I do understand this sort of thing is important for the club,” he said. “I’m glad we’ve had a meeting to sort things out with the club and now I just want to move on and look forward to Saturday’s game against Blackburn.”
The images that caused the upset were actually hosted on a website run by a marketing company Emmerson Marketing, which was supposed to be promoting the launch this week, but a loophole in its security meant Brown was able to access the images before the site went live.
“The images and video were being hosted on an independent website which was not live at that time and was password protected,” Norwich said.
“However Mr Brown confirmed he was able to access the source code where links to the kit imagery were revealed and post the images on Twitter.”
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