Touts selling England v Germany tickets for thousands of pounds online
Uefa urges fans to avoid ‘being duped’
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Your support makes all the difference.Touts have been selling tickets to England's first knockout match of Euro 2020 for thousands of pounds online.
Fans found out last night that Gareth Southgate's side will face Germany next week after the results of the final Group F games were decided.
The match will be played at Wembley, which will open at half-capacity to allow around 45,000 fans into the stadium for the round-of-16 clash.
Several online reselling platforms are listing tickets for the highly-anticipated fixture at more than £1,000 each. Tickets have been advertised for up to £10,000, according to The Times.
Follow Euro 2020 LIVE: England vs Germany latest plus Group F results reaction
Listings seen by The Independent advertise sales up to £3,000. On livefootballtickets, a service charge on top of tax meant the highest-priced ticket would cost £3,900. Even a seat at the very back of the upper-stands would cost over £2,000 with the added costs.
Another site, Gigsberg, had tickets from £766 up to £1,019. TicketPad was charging as much as £1,411.76.
Popular resale site Viagogo was not listing tickets for the match but competitor StubHub was charging more than ten times the face value. The Ireland-based site listed tickets for sale at €2,000 (£1,715) with a face value of €185.
But a spokesperson for Uefa told The Independent that such sites were in breach of strict terms and conditions preventing the unauthorised resale of tickets.
Tickets were initially allocated in a lottery and fans who are unable to attend are only allowed to resell at the price they paid to registered users of the Uefa platform.
The spokesperson said: “Uefa encourages fans not to be duped by touts who demand exorbitant prices despite often not being in possession of the tickets they claim to have for sale.
“Any tickets which are offered for sale on secondary ticketing platforms, social media, marketplaces etc, are advertised in breach of the ticket terms and conditions that all ticket buyers agree to before the purchase.”
According to Adam Webb, founder of the FanFair Alliance, ticket touts knowingly – and openly – work outside of the law.
The FanFair Alliance was formed in opposition to touts and has campaigned for reforms to ticket sales to protect consumers.
“There are three facts everyone needs to know about so-called secondary ticketing websites,” Mr Webb told The Times.
“First, they are typically registered overseas and are set up specifically to target British consumers . . . Second, they tend to operate in open breach of UK consumer protection laws.
“And third, the tickets on these platforms are predominantly listed by large-scale touts, some of whom do not even possess the tickets they are selling.”
He added: “I would advise any football fan to avoid them like the plague."
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