Interesting article in today's Times on football tourism and ticketing. We feature.... in case the link cant be opened, Ive edited our bit in text as below.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...d-tickets-to-watch-palace-v-burnley-tvfzd8zb8
Fly 5,700 miles and buy overpriced tickets – to watch Palace v Burnley
Alyson Rudd looks at the growing cult of football tourism in Great Britain
.........On Easter Saturday I stood at the StubHub desk at Goodison Park and saw a queue that snaked almost out of sight. The Everton Supporters Trust had issued an open letter critical of the club’s association with StubHub, the ticket-exchange company, and said that tickets worth £45 had been put on sale for £145 for the visit of Burnley.
I met Megan and Brian from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for whom this was their first trip to England. The match was the focal point, the reason for being here at all. “I think it will be the best thing we do,” said Brian, who loves Everton thanks to Tim Howard, the American goalkeeper who spent ten years at Goodison.
A steward stood next to the queue watching over visitors like a possessive mother duck and said it was his job to help out anyone who seemed disorientated and point out which stand they needed. A father and son from Oslo stood icily to one side. Their tickets were not there but in a flash a club official was at hand to find a solution.
“It’s like if you open a new bank account you get a free pair of slippers but what about if you’ve been with the same bank or company 30 years?” asks George McKane, spokesman for the Everton Supporters Trust.
He does not object in principle to overseas visitors and will even pick them up from the airport, but he is worried about “selfie-stick supporters” who are there mainly to support an event rather than a team.
“A family friend from Poland wanted a ticket for Anfield and I told him he was more likely to get one applying from Poland,” he said. “I’d like to meet people saying, ‘I support Exeter because I come from there.’ Football has become incredibly gentrified.”
From the club’s perspective a deal with a ticket agency offers a secure way for fans to sell on seats that they cannot use and it is the fans’ choice how much they want to profit from selling on.
..........If money can be made, then the temptation is too strong for most and the demand is there. In the Goodison queue there was a father and son over from Dublin and the son visibly blanched when I asked the cost of what was a birthday gift for his dad.
The visitors who most rile fans are those such as the couple from California who were at Goodison because they could not get tickets to Old Trafford, the joint most popular football tourist destination along with the Emirates. They were unlikely to sing, unlikely to be blown away, unlikely even to spend much in the club shop — but for all the ticket transfer schemes, there is no way of testing what kind of fan, besotted, enthusiastic, pragmatic or equivocal, will end up sitting in your ground come kick-off.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...d-tickets-to-watch-palace-v-burnley-tvfzd8zb8
Fly 5,700 miles and buy overpriced tickets – to watch Palace v Burnley
Alyson Rudd looks at the growing cult of football tourism in Great Britain
.........On Easter Saturday I stood at the StubHub desk at Goodison Park and saw a queue that snaked almost out of sight. The Everton Supporters Trust had issued an open letter critical of the club’s association with StubHub, the ticket-exchange company, and said that tickets worth £45 had been put on sale for £145 for the visit of Burnley.
I met Megan and Brian from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for whom this was their first trip to England. The match was the focal point, the reason for being here at all. “I think it will be the best thing we do,” said Brian, who loves Everton thanks to Tim Howard, the American goalkeeper who spent ten years at Goodison.
A steward stood next to the queue watching over visitors like a possessive mother duck and said it was his job to help out anyone who seemed disorientated and point out which stand they needed. A father and son from Oslo stood icily to one side. Their tickets were not there but in a flash a club official was at hand to find a solution.
“It’s like if you open a new bank account you get a free pair of slippers but what about if you’ve been with the same bank or company 30 years?” asks George McKane, spokesman for the Everton Supporters Trust.
He does not object in principle to overseas visitors and will even pick them up from the airport, but he is worried about “selfie-stick supporters” who are there mainly to support an event rather than a team.
“A family friend from Poland wanted a ticket for Anfield and I told him he was more likely to get one applying from Poland,” he said. “I’d like to meet people saying, ‘I support Exeter because I come from there.’ Football has become incredibly gentrified.”
From the club’s perspective a deal with a ticket agency offers a secure way for fans to sell on seats that they cannot use and it is the fans’ choice how much they want to profit from selling on.
..........If money can be made, then the temptation is too strong for most and the demand is there. In the Goodison queue there was a father and son over from Dublin and the son visibly blanched when I asked the cost of what was a birthday gift for his dad.
The visitors who most rile fans are those such as the couple from California who were at Goodison because they could not get tickets to Old Trafford, the joint most popular football tourist destination along with the Emirates. They were unlikely to sing, unlikely to be blown away, unlikely even to spend much in the club shop — but for all the ticket transfer schemes, there is no way of testing what kind of fan, besotted, enthusiastic, pragmatic or equivocal, will end up sitting in your ground come kick-off.
