Ticket touting has existed in English football for as long as most can remember. The practice of buying tickets for a game with the intention of selling them on for inflated prices and a profit. Whilst the days of stadium train stations being littered with touts appear to be behind us, the modern ticket scalpers live online behind the safety net of legitimate secondary ticketing sites.
The official line from the Premier League is that these are still unauthorised means of acquiring tickets – despite the fact many tickets still appear regularly on these sites. Vivid Seats is just one of these exchanges, where tickets are often listed well in excess of their original face value. What is different though about Vivid Seats, is that the Chelsea Chairman Todd Boehly has a reported stake of around 41% in the company. Beyond the potential conflict of interest, this investment represents a clear kick in the teeth to those that actively work to eliminate ticket touting- which officially includes Chelsea FC themselves – and exacerbates the pricing out of regular fans that wish to attend games at Stamford Bridge.
The response from the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust and other commentators was almost universal in their condemnation of Boehly. Hyper-inflated ticketing clearly only seeks to benefit the touts and the exchanges they use, but is there more that the Premier League can do beyond denouncing them?
Why the Premier League should embrace pragmatism
Secondary ticketing is driven by the popularity of the Premier League and the scarcity of tickets. The appeal goes far beyond members and season ticket holders, but in modern times is driven by sports tourism and the international demand for tickets. US Premier League fans will often pay many times the face value for tickets in order to catch a rare glimpse of their team in person. The practice of selling tickets on an exchange is far more common in North America, as is seeing those tickets at many times the original face value.
That demand is only likely to increase, and unless Chelsea are going to expand to a 100,000+ capacity stadium in the next few seasons, the pressure on domestic non-season ticket holder pricing will only get worse. Rather than wish the problem away through words, the Premier League should act to regulate the way in which tickets can be transferred and sold.
Most Premier League clubs operate a face value internal ticket exchange – Chelsea are no different in this regard – ensuring fans that are unable to attend games can resell their seat at the listed ticket price. Tickets though still end up on sites like Vivid regularly, often premium packages, but also a number of general admission options too. Clearly there needs to be a tightening in the ID process for internal ticket exchange and increased means of tracking a ticket back to the original purchaser.
The alternative is to liberalise the whole process and embrace secondary ticketing, but with restrictions. The most obvious of which is to cap the price on the market – for example a 10% premium above the face value – which would likely be enough to prevent ticket purchasing for events with no other intention but to profit from selling it on. It would also ensure that tickets remain within the realm of affordability for fans that aren’t able to attend games as regularly. In addition, limits could be placed on the number of times a ticket can change hands. Often in the case of touted tickets, the seats have gone through a number of intermediaries and purchasers before they end up with the person that actually ends up attending the game. Whilst only allowing one transfer per ticket doesn’t prevent exploitive behaviour alone, it reduces the chances of active manipulation of the ticketing market. In the era of electronic ticketing it is possible to track the movement of seats more effectively and prevent transfer between more than two parties.
Words alone haven’t solved Premier League secondary ticketing, and with people willing to pay more and more for a seat at the big game it is time for a different approach to be adopted.
Should the Premier League act to regulate secondary ticketing?