EDITOR'S VIEWPOINT
Ticket Touts
Comments (61) : Which strikes me as odd when you consider the subject and the intention of the request ? that we do our bit to combat the scourge of ticket touts who are no doubt keenly anticipating a feeding frenzy over Cup Final Tickets and who may already be active on our Bulletin Board.
Of course it raises the question of duplicity for the FA, who on the one hand bleat about the crime of ticket touting, and how it must be stamped out, while on the other hand creating this "football family" nonsense that provides the very feedstock of touting they are so concerned about.
A letter from the FA Solicitor, expressing concern about the possibility that some of our corespondents may not be genuine fans but instead are professional touts, seems more like a public service announcement than a private communication, especially as it contains information about the "Out the Tout" Campaign and a warning that your FA Cup Final tickets may be voided or cancelled.
It also represents a good opportunity for Everton fans to vent their frustrations at the FA, who have created this ridiculous situation to the detriment of true fans from the clubs participating in the Final, and who then proceed to engage us in their fight against the fundamental laws of supply and demand, price elasticity, and all that other basic stuff we learned in macroeconimics.
Rather sad to my mind that this casts an unpleasant pall over what we all want to be one of the Great Days for Everton Football Club.
Reader Comments
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There will be at least 7,000 fans like me who were at the semi and are now looking for a spare!!!
Market conditions and the demand for a limited supply of tickets is creating this situation BUT it?s the FA that have created this market in the first place!! Tossers!!!!
(If Everton and Chelsea were given 32,000 each then we wouldn't have the situation where you need to pay up to 20 times the face value to secure a ticket!!)
We should send the email addresses and contact details of every twat from Club Wembley who is trying to rip us off to footballforall@thefa.com (Out the Tout in the subject box).
I?m going down to Wembley without a ticket and will take my chances trying to get one outside the ground just before KO!! Hopefully ticket prices will be a bit more sensible then!
If it?s half as good as the semi-final, it will be an quality day and amazing atmoshere!! COYB
The FA really do have a cheek - they give us and Chelsea bugger all tickets and then expect us to ’out the touts’ !!!
I have already emailed the FA informing them that the biggest supplier of tickets to the touts for the FA Cup final is ........... THE FA !!!!
Suffice to say I never got a reply ......
As much as I believe it should be a free democracy, I also feel that the site does need to take some responsibility about who can post what.
Also please remove anyone trying to sell any tickets at prices other than face value...
PLEASE!
All tickets should be married up to the person who bought them and coded with a credit card or some sort of smart details so that on entry into the ground if the names don't match the ticket then tough luck.
End of.
Out the Touts... don?t make me laugh.
FAO the FA: Type "cup final tickets" into Google and you will get the very list of sites you have failed to close down. You don't need to be a rocket scientist!
I can only echo the comments about the pathetic allocation and distribution of tickets initially which drives this ’evil’ black market and reiterate that the FA need to look at themselves to find the route of this problem, not ’touts’.
Lets also face facts, if my ticket were to end up in the hands of someone else for a vastly inflated price(which it wont of course), what exactly would Mary be doing about that?? Nothing I would suggest.
How on earth could you prove that a) I had sold the ticket for anything other than face value( I assume touts dont take cheques??) b) that I hadn’t attended the match and simply lost my ticket stub or c) that the information you were given is simply wrong??
This is a toothless, frankly stupid, waste of time, money and resources that could be better employed elsewhere i’m sure.
Football ticket touts are a scab of the FA?s making. They are a product of the FA?s refusal to dedicate the FA Cup Final to the Clubs in the final and to their supporters. It is in the remit of the FA to solve the problem... don?t expect us to.
?Out the FA? I say, the touts will disappear from football all together then.
Idiots!
It is too late for this year so you?re left shaking your fist at a swinging barn door when the horse has disappeared. The only answer is for the FA to allocate a reasonable number of tickets to the finalists. Even then you will have to be realistic and accept a black market will emerge.
"Out the FA" ? here fucking here
But there are people who can afford to pay what ever it takes to get a ticket, so there is a market, so stop moaning, at least on here. They may actually get their tickets, and not get ripped off by some company in Spain or whereever!!!
Absolutely nothing will be done about the touts and absolutely nothing will be done about satisfying the need of tickets for real fans.
The FA is in such debt that I wouldn?t be suprised if they are responsible for the touting. Lying, cheating and mismanaged organisation.
What does the FA provide us? Sweet FA!
The only way to stop the touts is not to buy from them... I know it won?t happen but if Wembley and Rome had around 20,000 empty seats, the administrators may take notice.
This will mean every seat allocation will have a name assiciated with it, rather than issueing paper tickets.
You just need to turn up on match day with ID and a password, which you gave when you bought the seat.
This system would make selling your seats to a 3rd party a lot harder as it would necessitate a name change.
Anyone who pays £750 for a ticket, good luck to them...
What we received from the FA’s solicitor, Mary Guest, was a letter via email, not a "post" to the site intended for publication so I didn’t see any justification for posting it verbatim under the banner of an editorial "Column".
That’s not to say we can’t raise her concerns and highlight the FA’s attempts to clamp down on touting tickets on websites, particularly as she suggests that we do raise the issue:
"It is also worth noting that where people actually purchase tickets from touts we ask that they provide us with details so that we can look to take action against the person who originally purchased the ticket, to try and stop the supply of tickets to touts. " If you speak to anybody about touted tickets that they may have purchased or discuss this issue with regards to your site, perhaps you could mention this?"
That said, these touts are targeting people’s desperation to see their team in the Final and I’m in complete agreement that the FA is to blame here for the pitiful allocation to both Everton and Chelsea. [Though, really, blaming the FA for touts is like saying it’s the bank’s fault it was robbed because it houses money.]
I also agree, however, that if someone wants to pay $750 for a ticket, then good luck to them, and if someone pays hundreds or more up front without proof of a ticket existing, then that’s also on them.
Apparently, in the United Kingdom, resale of football match tickets is illegal under section 166 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 unless the resale is authorized by the organizer of the match, such as what viagogo is doing through its partnerships with Chelsea FC, Manchester United, and Everton FC.
Apparently, despite the blather about touts, the law does not distinguish between ticket touts and genuine fans... and the amount of mark-up on the face value of the ticket is irrelevant.
However, I know of at least 10 Blues who are coming over anyway, ticketless, from South Africa alone (a fucking costly exercise!) ..... and I expect it would be the same from Oz, the US and all the other places with Supporters Clubs.
We made an official approach to the club for some tickets, expecting to be laughed out of town.... and we were correct. So guess where we will be trying to get our tickets from?
Actually, I have a decent lead I am following up at the moment. A mate of mine (a kopite) works for one of the major German car manufacturers..... in another country in Europe......and he has been given - yes, given - two tickets to the cup final, and seems to think it will be a doddle to get one for me too. So go figure. It’s an absolute disgrace, but what the fuck do the FA expect??
We have no chance whatsoever of getting any tickets through conventional channels, so we have no choice but to go under the radar.
For it to be accurate a Bank would have to give half its money to the wrong people in the first place and then these ’wrong people’ would rob the ’right people’ who should have been given the money in the first place!
Touts and inflated prices do not exist because the FA have tickets! Touts and inflated prices exist because the FA give half the tickets to the wrong people.
There is no excusing the FA, they are totally to blame. Unlike your analogous Bank, it is not the FA who are being robbed it is supporters who pay through the nose via touts to see their team at Wembley.
I agree that it really does seem both ridiculous and very unfair to genuine fans. However, I do think that we are all being a little hypocritical on this. None of us will complain when the club receives the cheques from Cup Final related sponsorship deals. Will we be emailing Bill Kenwright come the following Monday morning, asking him to give the money back? Will we be asking David Moyes come the first day of the August transfer window to give the money to charity instead of spending it on the squad? Will we heck.
Whether we like it or not, Corporate Sponsorship is now a large part of, and a serious driving force behind all major professional sports, golf, rugby and yes, football included. This means that it dictates to clubs, and fans as a consequence, on everything from the day and times of matches, to how the tickets are allocated for a Major final.
Twenty years ago, how ridiculous would the idea of a top flight football game being played at 8pm on a Monday night have seemed? Sky Sports changed all that. While all the changes since Sky revolutionised football may not always be for the better, the money received from it and it's kind are keeping clubs, including ours afloat. The piper gets to call the tune and while we are happy to accept the money from Corporate Sponorship then we just have to accept everything that comes with it.
If there are, say, 50 Companies who are sponsors, then give each, say, a 100 tickets for them and their minnions. A total of 5000.
We could live with that as 35,000 extra tickets would be available for supporters of the Clubs involved and touting at the FA Cup Final would become extinct.
Ask for photo ID when these greedy Club Wembley ?fans? turn up, if they ID name doesn?t match the ticket name then take the Club Wembley debenture bollocks off them. They?ll ask themselves if it was worth it.
Simple fact is the FA are wankers, end of.
And Kieran, the biggest problem here is not corporate sponsorship (and at least some of that money ends up in football), it’s as Michael originally points out the utterly ludicrous ’football family’. This is just making people in small football clubs and associations intermediaries for touts.
It would be more honest (and make more money for football!) if the FA set up an ’Accredited Touts Group’ and then auctioned say 20,000 tickets to them. The FA would then at least get to share some of the super-ordinary margins on the sell-on to the genuine fans. At the moment the excess margin above ticket price is shared solely between the members of that football family and the touts.
Maybe I will suggest it to the FA...
Sorry mate for being anal, but as I spent enough darn years studying it couldn’t help myself correct this - should be microeconomics. I agree with the thrust of the article. The football family bollocks is a complete disgrace but the whole FA is a 4king disgrace and there’s little we can do to change something which is essentially rotten to the core.
The only possible way I could imagine the situation changing is if a club boycotted their appearance in the final as a protest on behalf of their fans. That would piss on the party and make the relevant people sit up and take notice not going to happen though is it?! Maybe Elstone when he voiced his disapproval with ticket allocation should have said ’we are now considering our appearance in the final as our fans deserve better than this’
FA Cup Finals
Carling Cup Finals
FA Cup Semi?s
All England games
Community Shield
Challenge League Cup Final.
If you buy it now you can also guarantee a Club Seat for the Cup Final ticket for £249.
I know not everyone can afford it, but it only works out at £187 per ticket, per event. DON?T BUY OFF THESE MORONS CHARGEING £700 PER TICKET
I called Wembley on 0208 795 9580 and got a couple of seats and guaranteed my cup final ticket. I thought other people may find this info useful.
"We have a lot of European commitments next season, and we are considering not competing in the FA Cup unless the finalists are guaranteed at least 32,500 tickets each. It is just not worth our while to fight all the way there and then have to deal with all the justified disappointment of our fans. Up to you FA - but all six of us will be pulling out unless you agree".
That might focus their minds...
I live in Chesterfield, and when they got to the FA cup semi-final they sold about 25 to 30,000 tickets when their average attendance is about 4,000.
The first is that, because of the way they allocate tickets, less genuine fans of the two finalists go than should. Yes, you are right, 40,000 would still not be enough. But it’s 18,000 better than 22,000.
The second - which is most of what this thread has been about - is that the way they allocate tickets ABSOLUTELY INEVITABLY creates the tout problem. Simply because they give tens of thousands of tickets to people who don’t particularly want to use them, in a market environment in which these people can make hundreds of pounds (or more) by selling them. Unless the basic laws of human nature and economics are suspended, what the FA does MUST create a touting problem.
There is actually a third thing, which makes one finally despair about the FA. To then create an ’Outing the Touts’ campaign after creating the problem makes them look like imbeciles. It is as if the NHS handed out firecrackers and matches to children and then launched a ’Be Safe with Fireworks’ campaign.
FA is Mr Big, Touts the crack dealers on the street corners. Fans are desperate kids, needing... just one more ticket.
Like Pete Clark has experienced, you "Crack" dealing touts beware on the day. You will be separated from your tickets, wallet, car keys, credit cards and forced to give out your pin number. And no one will help you.
It will be interesting for TW to have an article after the final called "Who turned over a tout?"
Are these the people the FA want us to out? My guess is that individuals selling on a couple of tickets will only account for a few thousand tickets. The vast majority of football family tickets therefore are not being moved on through the hands of individuals but through ticket companies and agencies.
These companies, and we can all find them on the internet, offer tickets at way over face value and they don?t seem to be in short supply. Can someone explain how they manage to get all of their tickets?
I put it to them, that they could phone this arsehole & cancel his tickets and ban him from receiving FA tickets in the future. Like an earlier post, i never received a reply either, instead they pass the buck onto ToffeWeb.
I?m actually surprised, Micheal Kenrick, that you?ve given these scumbags advertising space, considering that they're trying to rip off fellow blues! (Some of us work hard so we can follow the lads.)
Anyhow, good luck to all of us who are still searching and to those blues who get that knock on the door from postman pat, have a great day.
If you go to:
http://www.wembleystadium.com/default.aspx
you can click on the link to My Wembley on the left hand side of the page it takes you to registration. It costs £50 to register but you then get access to all of the "events" at wembley from now until the end of December. I?ve bought two "silver" tickets at £400 each (they go up to £750 each for the Bobby Moore club tickets). These are face value (+10%) tickets.
I don?t want to take the chance of not getting tickets at Wembley on the day because I?m taking my 12-year-old son. So I bit the bullet. Luckily I can afford it.
At time of this post, there are only 6 Bobby Moore tickets available - but be patient and keep trying. Since I bought my tickets on Sunday, there have been a number of other £400 tickets on sale but they quickly get snapped up.
If you can afford it, let?s make the Club Wembley level an Everton domain. COYB!!!
Cheeky fuckers have the audacity to then tell us about "out the ticket touts".
Unlike the rest of the country, we in Liverpool (sorry Everton) have some intelligence between our ears, and we don?t fall for hot air merchants talking with forked tongues.
If, each year, the clubs were to state just how many season tickets holders there are and sort them, be it 2 x 18k or 1 X 25k (us) and 1 X 50k??? United and then the FA sell the rest on ebay fair chance for all, free market, user pays, all that other modern bollocks. The greater football family (more bollocks) can, if they wish, take part in the occaision by putting their money down, or not, if they wish.
Result, the touts are caught short and the FA makes a profit on the deal, or not as the case my be. Sorted
I've done the same thing myself and got 2 x silver tickets, what is the dress code as I have read you cannot wear your team colours as it is supposed to be a neutral zone, I know the tickets are dear but it was the only way to get tickets rather than somebody flogging the same tickets with a mark-up.
There’s going to be loads of us blues in that ’neutral’ tier. COYB
In all honesty, loads of people were showing their coulours and there was no trouble, even though the Mancs outnumbered the blues by about 3 to 1 in my section (which was in the Everton end).
Maybe, if the stadium was big enough to host BIG games, the problem would be minimized. But horse, gate, bolted, etc.
Secondly there is an issue around Club Wembley. If the FA encourage the sale of long-term seats in Club Wembley, one of the benefits for club owners is that they can legally sell their tickets back to Wembley, who will then sell them on the ticket holders behalf and re-imburse the debenture holder the full price for that match. I?m sure touts must get hold of those tickets for Wembley to guarantee reimbursement in full. They do this to sell Club Wembley seats. I?m not sure if FA Cup Finals are on the list of Club Wembley games but, even if they?re not, the Club Wembley seat owner would have an option to buy (which he probably does) and then sells at a profit.
Thirdly, the article writer is naive to think that you can get rid of ticket touts. He seems to understand macroeconomics (the big picture as opposed to microeconomics) but part of economics is the black market. If someone wants to sell at a price and someone wants to buy at a price, how can it be policed? It can?t.
Four: I think ticket touts serve a great purpose. Many events are stitched up by clubs, associations and hangers on. It?s not fair that we have to pay over the odds but at least they give the opportunity for people who don?t fall into those categories to buy a ticket.
The FA are naive if they think they can shut down websites. Who in their right mind after buying a ticket from a tout at a price are going to report them to the FA? Touts serve a need because organisations like the FA are totally incompetent and cannot fairly distribute tickets to the real hardcore supporters. It?s those people they ignore and exploit that make the FA?s very existence even remotely possible. Don?t blame the touts. Blame the FA.
As per Phil’s post, we’re planning on having alternative shirts, just in case. However, I hope like Ade’s post that there’ll be no issue.
By the way, where are you guys sat? We’re in Block 232 row 5, which is in the South West (Chelsea) part of the stadium.
However, I do see the potential for trouble in the Club Wembley seats for a game like this as there is no segregation either in the seating or on the Club Wembley concourse. It only needs a few drunken fans of either team to kick it off ? not something the FA or Wembley have probably envisaged in this prestigious part of the ground.
the alternative shirt idea sound good, I think I am in block 232 as well but I will only find out when they are posted out, did you get a confirmation email? I didn?t but the transaction occured as my credit card has been charged for the price of the tickets.
It?s clear that TW could be "charged" / "criminalised" for being involved in this practice.
The FA are obviously looking for easy targets in threatening TW. I bet if someone asked the DCMS under the Freedom of Information Act for stats about successful prosecution of internet touts there would be a negligible response, Most of these sites are apparently based overseas and outside UK jurisdiction.
Defenders of the "free market" (macro / micro) are missing the point . The FA can maximise their income from Club Wembley and still give out 14000 tickets to the so called "football family"
For example I met a guy (Watford fan) last week who got his " family reward" due to winning the local referees FAC draw.
Until this "privilege" is scrapped this will provide a supply of tickets to the touts.
I don?t condemn fans for buying tickets from touts The point is ? as made by many others ? that a large number of these tickets could have gone at face value to deserving fans.
I am just gonna turn up and try to blag it in.
Loads of the lads went to the semis without tickets and most, if not all of them made it inside.
The real problem is not touts who have been around since the romans opened the coliseum.
The real problem is the ticket allocation is too low for the 2 clubs involved.
If the allocation was 30,000 plus each then fans would be pretty well sorted.
Anyone desperate/daft/loaded enough to pay many times face value can do so.
The FA are a bunch of blazer wearing duffers with no idea how to arrange a piss up in a brewery let alone run the multi billion pound enterprise of football in this country.
I've just been watching the fizzy pop play-off and it's just been announced that Sheffield United will receive 37,000 tickets for the play-off final!! Surely that's the size of the allocation that should be for the Cup finalists? Let all the bloody 'FA Family' and the Corporate mob go to the play off final I'm sure Coca-Cola would make it worth their while.
How the size of these allocations can be justified is beyond me and I really sympathise with all the regular fans who'll miss out on a place at Wembley, this news is just another slap in the face for them.
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1 Posted 05/05/2009 at 12:55:09
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I had a season ticket for 4 years before a young family came along and I live 3 hours away also so I?m lucked out, fair enough.
Instead my mate has won 4 tickets in a VIP golf tournament and another has gotten corporate tickets though a supplier at work. Neither support EFC or Chelsea. The FA deem they are more worthy. Football Family my arse!