Thousands of fake or bogus tickets for the football World Cup this summer in South Africa are being sold on websites including Gumtree and eBay for many times their face value.
Fifa, the competition organiser, said that sellers were seeking to profit from fans desperate to get to the now sold-out England group games, semi-finals and finals.
The Metropolitan Police central e-crime unit said: “Tickets will only be issued in South Africa for the World Cup. So anyone claiming to be able to supply tickets will be either supplying counterfeit tickets or nothing will be received.
“Given that tickets for the World Cup can only be collected in South Africa, it appears that any site offering tickets will have criminal intent
Fifa confirmed that it would not issue paper tickets until a few weeks before the competition starts — supplying them to the original applicant at collection points in South Africa. It said that if tickets listed for sale at sites other than Fifa’s are not fakes, they must have been allocated to other names, and should not be resold.
Fifa said: “Genuine tickets are sold online exclusively via the official website Fifa.com. A special team from Fifa’s legal affairs division is working with international authorities to monitor the internet for such illegal offers and to take action to combat them.”
Nevertheless, companies in Britain and overseas are openly reselling tickets for sold-out matches at a hefty mark-up.
Fifa’s rules state that tickets may only be used by the ticketholder named at the time of purchase, whose name will be printed on the ticket. Some resellers may attempt to have the name changed to the new buyer’s by abusing Fifa’s ticket transfer policy. This permits name changes for non-commercial reasons, such as illness.
The seller behind the first World Cup ticket listing viewed on eBay, the auction website, admitted to this. “kobi5842” wanted a starting bid of $3,400 (£2,223) or a “buy it now” price of $5,400 (£3,531) for two tickets to the World Cup final with a total face value of $1,200. He wrote: “I will try my best to personalise the tickets to the buyer of this auction, but I won’t refund the sales amount in case Fifa does not agree.”
This user’s account was suspended by eBay for suspected fraud after our intervention. However, he was back online at the time of writing, with a “100 per cent positive” feedback rating. eBay said: “In accordance with English and Welsh law, eBay UK strictly prohibits the resale of tickets to the Fifa World Cup. We do not allow anyone to list or purchase such tickets on eBay.co.uk and we prevent users from bidding on or buying tickets from sellers outside of the UK.”
No such measures were in place at Gumtree.com, the listings site, where you found “Mark” offering “VIP Suite” tickets to all England matches, and various others, for £2,500 each. He posted two mobile phone numbers and an e-mail address as contacts. Another user claimed to have “bought lots of tickets trying to ensure I gained a good selection of games”, leaving 22 for resale.
Gumtree said: “We were alerted to a small number of ads which have now been removed, and we have updated our detection technology... we always do our very best to prevent ads selling football tickets from appearing on the site.”
England fans hoping to buy valid tickets should go to Fifa.com on April 15 when returns may be available. Tickets are still available as part of travel packages from Fifa-approved tour operators.
Fans pay dearly $895 (£587) — the amount Global Tickets in Manchester is selling category 1 tickets for England v USA for, against a face value of US$160 (£105)
Source: worldcupticketservice.com
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