Arsenal fans were today being charged more than £21,000 for a pair of black market FA Cup final tickets — more than 200 times the face value of the cheapest official seats.
Online touts are cashing in on huge demand from fans desperate to see their club try to lift a record 12th FA Cup against Aston Villa on Saturday.
Supporters today claimed the market is being driven in part by the policy of giving each finalist just 25,000 tickets when Wembley Stadium has a capacity of 90,000. Arsenal have 45,000 season ticket holders and a further 150,000 members and are unhappy that so many fans will miss out on the final for the second year running.
Of the remaining tickets, 17,000 have been given to Club Wembley members and a further 23,000 distributed to what the FA calls the “football family” — including all the other professional clubs, county associations, volunteers and corporate sponsors.
Tickets cost from £50-£120. But touts are exploiting a loophole in legislation to offer seats at eye-watering mark-ups on secondary ticketing websites. Under the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, it is illegal to tout football tickets online but the legislation is limited to transactions in England and Wales.
Sellers on Edinburgh-based FootballTicketPad’s website are currently charging Arsenal supporters up to £21,230 for a pair of £120 category 1 tickets, while pairs of final tickets currently cost up to £7,800 on the website of Bilbao-based business ticketbis.
However, the resale of tickets can breach events’ terms and conditions, meaning that if discovered fans could be denied entry.
