£1,000 a ticket for the Ashes finale
Kirstie Hopkin14.08.09
Tickets for England's Ashes showdown with Australia are being sold for 20 times their face value despite pledges to crack down on touting.
The Standard has found tickets being offered on US websites for almost $1,800 — more than £1,000 — to cricket fans desperate to witness the
series' conclusion.
The news comes amid growing concern about crowd behaviour at next week's Fifth Test at the Brit Oval.
Lambeth council is planning high-profile patrols to prevent touts selling tickets on the street but the England and Wales Cricket Board says it is powerless to shut down websites selling seats at vastly inflated prices.
Tickets for the Oval, which has a capacity of 23,000, were originally priced between £52 and £92 and quickly sold out. This has fuelled internet sales, and many fans now face paying
well over the odds for a seat — plus “booking fees” of up to £130.
The match starts on Thursday next week with England needing a win to reclaim the Ashes.
Hopes of victory have sent interest soaring to the level seen in 2005, when England last reclaimed the historic urn.
US website finaltickets.com is selling tickets for Saturday's play at up to $1,510, plus a $226.50 service fee and $40 shipping — adding up to a total of $1776.50, equivalent to £1,071.
The getmein.com site, which links to the reputable Ticketmaster brand, had tickets on sale from £251 to £440. Another website, soldoutticketevents. com, offered seats from £165 to £398.
Seatwave.com offered £52 Saturday tickets for up to £759 plus a £130 booking fee, while trustedtickets.com was selling the same day for £851.
Private sellers were also looking to cash in, with two tickets for the final day on sale on Gumtree.com for £275.
Lambeth council's anti-touting operation at the ground and at Oval and Vauxhall Tube stations will fine illegal street traders £150 fines.
A council spokesman said: “We are going to be running operations on every day of the match, a combination of high-profile activity to act as a deterrent and more covert operations. We are expecting a fairly lively few days.”
Selling tickets for inflated prices is not illegal. But touts who sell stolen or counterfeit tickets face being prosecuted for fraud or deception.
During the Twenty20 World Cup this year, the England and Wales Cricket Board used private investigators to take nearly 2,000 black market tickets off the market, targeting 400 sellers.
“We will be prepared to take similar action in the run-up to this Test,” an ECB spokesman said. He added: “We have been making concerted efforts to address this issue.
We are asking the Government to make international cricket the same status as the Olympics and treat touting as a criminal offence.”
Residents living near the Oval, in Kennington,
fear the increasing popularity of cricket will mean greater disruption from boisterous crowds.
Lisa Young, chairman of the United Friends of Oval, said: “What worries me about this Test is whether we will find more of the rowdy type coming to the ground. It could be five days of great disruption.”
But Paul Burnham, spokesman for the England supporters' Barmy Army, said: “The supervision at the Oval is always spot on. The atmosphere there is always right to the peak but without being over the top. It's an example to the rest of the country. I think [the mat ch] is going to be as big as it was in 2005.”
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