Football tickets are being touted on resale websites in vast numbers, a Guardian investigation has found, prompting warnings that fans are being ripped off and their safety put at risk.
Undercover filming has revealed how websites including Viagogo and Ticketbis exploit alliances with professional touts to bypass laws drawn up to improve fan safety, and prevent touting, following the Hillsborough disaster.
The Guardian highlighted how reselling undermines fan segregation after Milan supporters were placed among Arsenal fans at a Europa League tie in London despite buying “away” tickets on Viagogo.
Under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, it is an offence for a person without authorisation from a football club to sell a ticket or otherwise dispose of it to a third party. But resale websites based overseas, including the four sites in the Guardian investigation, are able to ignore this law.
Tickets bought by the Guardian for games involving Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea were priced far above face value, prompting anger from fans’ groups about the impact on the cost of watching football.
Fresh revelations about the rise of online touting come after mass online reselling was blamed for crowd disturbances at a Europa League match between Arsenal and Cologne in September.
One man, an “agent” for Ticketbis operating outside Wembley Stadium, boasted that he had hundreds of tickets for every Tottenham Hotspur game, something experts said could not be done legally. He later claimed he did not sell tickets and was just a “courier” for Ticketbis, owned by the leading ticket resale site StubHub, despite having been filmed offering to cut the website out of any future ticket purchases.
The Guardian also bought a ticket through the Switzerland-based Viagogo for Arsenal’s Europa League tie against Milan in March.
The ticket was listed as being in the Milan supporters’ section but turned out to be a seat assigned to fans with an Arsenal membership, contravening strict segregation policies designed to prevent violence at football matches. Four Milan fans at the game, who said they had also ended up in the wrong section after buying through Viagogo, were subjected to verbal abuse during the match.
At a Tottenham Hotspur match with Leicester City, a Ticketbis “agent” – a term used by the site for the person handing over the ticket, which in some cases appears to be a professional tout – had several season ticket cards, usually owned by dedicated fans. He claimed to be able to procure tickets for “anything”, including football and music events.
Tickets for the Manchester City v Basel Champions League in March were delivered by a courier holding multiple envelopes bearing names and collection instructions, indicating a well-organised operation. All of the websites used to buy tickets advertised multiple games in competitions including the Premier League, Europa League, Champions League, FA Cup and even next month’s World Cup in Russia.
Touts questioned by the Guardian declined to say how they got hold of tickets but some were in possession of season tickets while at least one seat was obtained using a club membership.
Software designed to harvest tickets from individual football clubs’ ticketing systems is also freely available online.
One security and ticketing expert said the new evidence was “disconcerting”.
“The legislation prohibiting unauthorised resale of football tickets is there to stop public order problems. It’s a recipe for disaster, ticket resale for football matches on this scale,” Reg Walker, who runs the Iridium Consultancy, said.
He added that there was no legitimate way that anyone could have hundreds of tickets for sale.
“You’d have to pretend to be multiple consumers [to buy the tickets] but you’re acting as a business because you’re selling them on at a profit. That’s unlawful,” he added.
Arsenal have urged fans to use the club’s own ticket exchange system and condemned touting, which a spokesperson said had “potential safety implications as this could compromise the segregation of fans”.
The club added that touting “results in supporters paying inflated prices to watch the team, which is not fair”.
All five ticket purchases made by the Guardian were significantly above face value, sparking concern from fans’ groups about the impact on prices and criticism of clubs that have commercial partnerships with resale platforms. Manchester City, for instance, have a business alliance with Viagogo that allows legitimate ticket exchange between fans.
A spokesperson for the Football Supporters’ Federation said: “We’ve long been opposed to supporters having to pay hugely inflated ticket prices to see their team. Unfortunately, club partnerships with resellers and secondary ticketing sites enable this all too frequently.”
As well as Viagogo and Ticketbis, the Guardian purchased tickets from smaller sites. For Manchester City v Basel, tickets were sold through a Spain-based company called Livefootballtickets.net, while a ticket for Chelsea away to Leicester City came from the Malta-based Football Ticket Pad.
Viagogo declined to comment, while StubHub, which paid £120m to buy the Spain-based Ticketbis in 2016, said it “complies with UK laws and does not allow the resale of football tickets unless this has been authorised by the club”.
A spokesperson for Tottenham Hotspur said Ticketbis was not one of its authorised sellers and urged fans not to buy from the company or similar sites.
A spokesperson for Football Ticket Pad said the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which outlawed ticket resale in 1994, had “served its purpose, which we are glad to say given that football violence is all but over”. The company said it was not bound by UK law but had tried to ensure fans were not seated in the wrong end.
Live Football Tickets did not respond to a request for comment.
Insp Matt Ashmead, of the Metropolitan police’s central football unit, said the police did run anti-touting operations but that existing legislation gave them limited power to tackle offshore websites.
“My opinion is that they [ticket companies] have found a loophole,” he said.
“Closing it would require legislation that would have to incorporate wording that would include the electronic offer to sell from a location outside of the UK. The legislation has not kept pace with the technology.”
The deputy leader of the Labour party, Tom Watson, urged the government to act on “industrial scale” ticket touting. He said: “There’s a reason there are strict rules segregating home and away fans. The resale of tickets by companies like Ticketbis and Viagogo is endangering supporters and pricing honest fans out of the game.”