Threats, tears & £800 tickets – how Man Utd are trying to tackle touts

The ticket touts issue at Manchester United is significant.

According to club officials, staff members have been subjected to intimidation and threats.

Fans have been pictured being left in tears after discovering that the seats they purchased for Old Trafford games have been sold by touts, sometimes more than once.

Someone paid £900 for a ticket in the away section for the Premier League game at Liverpool, according to the investigation.

The UK does not apply to businesses located abroad, but the same rules apply to businesses that are located there.

The club is attempting to solve the issue in a number of ways, but they are limited in their ability to stop everyone. They also acknowledge that some people are moving in the direction of their goals.

The scope of the issue was revealed to United staff earlier this month.

People who scurried around Sir Matt Busby’s way on Old Trafford matchdays used to be known for selling tickets in the past. However, the population has decreased.

In a way that makes formal identification difficult or impossible, trading is now done on Facebook or WhatsApp groups. Extremely challenging infiltration is.

Over 4,500 active users were prevented from purchasing tickets, according to United’s minutes from the Fans Forum meeting in October, saying 2, 000 tickets for the Premier League game against Chelsea on September 20 were “successfully reclaimed.” The main issue, according to the club, is the use of bots to buy a lot of tickets using prefabricated names.

Season ticket holders typically “repurpose” between 5, 000 and 7,500 tickets per game, according to the club. They believe that touts own 10% to 15% of United’s 47, 000 season tickets, making up the remaining 10%. Because the tickets are delivered digitally, current addresses are no longer required.

22, 000 United tickets were blocked or canceled around the club’s first five home games of the season, according to the organization.

Fans who seek out officials at the ticket office during away games are required to go to the club’s ticket office to have suspicious tickets checked. From that, it was determined that one fan paid £900 for a ticket to Liverpool’s victory, and another paid £800 for the team’s 2-2 draw earlier this month at Tottenham.

Some Old Trafford scenes can be upsetting as supporters discover they have been duped because more tickets are available. The ticket holders are permitted to enter the game during away games. The ticket’s origin is recorded, and steps are taken. When tickets for the same seats are being sold more than once at home, it’s frequently impossible.

Big business is touting. It is thought to be of a value of hundreds of thousands of pounds annually for those involved, not just Manchester United. The biggest northern clubs and all those in London are prime targets, along with supporters from abroad who are willing to pay a premium to avoid club ticketing regulations that they either have no knowledge of or do not meet.

Non-permanent staff at Manchester United once traveled to sell tickets off the street. Within a few seconds, it became clear that the people in charge of the touting operation had understood what was happening and had pressed them to explain why. Physical and verbal threats have been made during on-street ticket inspections.

The club feels as though its ownership of its season tickets is beginning to become clear. It is impossible to do the same with a membership of around 500,000 people where all members are able to apply for tickets.

Any ticket downloaded more than four times by Manchester United could be blocked at the turnstile, according to the club’s policy.

75 tickets were placed on a check at Tottenham because season ticket holders who had also attended every home cup game in the 2024-2019 season were limited to those who had purchased season tickets. 35 of those were touted tickets, and the other half did not go back to the ticket office to have the situation resolved. Twenty-eight of those belonged to the right people.

The club assumed that those tickets had been touted and that the “owner” had been instructed to relocate if something went wrong.

Some supporters have opposing viewpoints. They contend that fans are not required to carry ID under the law and that there is no specific prior notice of potential ID checks. Fans should not be compelled to open their phones as club staff have claimed, arguing that this is a data breach and a privacy breach.

The opposition is that some fans choose to completely miss the game and instead choose to find somewhere else to watch it because a significant number of United’s away fans typically arrive at stadiums close to kick-off and are aware of how long it will take to resolve the ticketing problem.

Additionally, there is concern among supporters about how much of the executive ticket holders’ money is spent on travel.

The club has abandoned the practice of disclosing the proportions of each game’s away allocation based on the number of tickets sold.

There is also a perception that the rules for forwarding tickets to other supporters are constrained and prevent supporters from assisting one another if they don’t win. United counteract this by claiming that violating the regulations only results in a legitimate applicant losing out.

Fans are reportedly complaining about these checks, but a United source said, “We know some fans find them annoying, but fans are also urging us to do more to ensure that away tickets are given to the fans who deserve them.”

We occasionally perform targeted checks on a select few unused tickets to confirm that the holder is the one who was wearing them. There are always instances where tickets have been sold for extortionate amounts, defrauding the customers who purchase them, and denying regular matchgoers a seat.

Our most devoted fans are always oversubscribed, so we have a duty to make sure that our away tickets arrive where they are supposed to.