West Ham have announced the ballot process for the West Ham v Watford game on 10th September at the London Stadium. The ballot will be open to Claret members who have parted with up to £40 for annual membership.
This home game will once again be restricted to a 57,000 capacity meaning less than 2,200 tickets will be available to the ballot process if Watford take a full away allocation of 2,800. The ballot will close at 5pm on Wednesday 31 August and successful applicants will be notified by email by Friday 2 September.
As yet, there is no confirmation that the long awaited club ticket exchange or ticket forwarding function will be activated or officially launched for this game leaving hundreds of season ticket holders no legal way of selling or lending out their tickets.
Despite the lack of tickets for the ballot one ticket website seems to have plenty of tickets for a price. www.Livefootballtickets.com is advertising 224 tickets for sale at the time of writing this article at prices between £113.53 for the cheapest ticket and £185.25 for a ticket in block 104 in the West Stand.
www.ticketbis.net also has 103 tickets for sale between €159.21 and €416.69.
Another site called www.kixfootballtickets.com also seems to have a limitless supply of tickets between £140 for standard tickets and £400 for Corporate tickets for the match.
All three websites are listed on the Premier League unauthorised list of ticket sellers https://www.premierleague.com/legal/safe-ticket-buying
I don’t understand the maths – 57k capacity, there’s supposed to be 52k Season Tickets holders, 2,800 opposing fan allocation leaving 2,200 available to the Membership!
But, there’s supposed to be approximately 5,000 available for Newham to give away to ‘the Community’ – where do the 5,000 ‘Community’ tickets come from?
There is no requirement to give 5,000 to Newham for every game. We have to give up to 100,000 per season. For example if we offered 20,000 per game for five early cup games including the two Europa league cup games we played at home we would fulfil our contractual obligations. Newham will probably struggle to find 100,000 people to fill all these seats as many of their residents are not West Ham fans or even football fans.
The key word is up to. As long as West Ham offer tickets for the less popular games we have done our bit. I have submitted a freedom of information request to find out how many tickets where given away to the community on the first four games so we should find out soon.
Yes, but with 52k Season Ticket holders and at least a couple of thousand to the opposition, where do the ‘Community Tickets’ come from? The 52k are already allocated, if they turn up or not – leaving only 5k left for other allocation including the opposing fans – it doesn’t add up – to me anyway – maybe I’m missing something!
So what your saying Sean is that it is just a belief that it is a 5k at a time for community matches.Where as the truth is that they could give out only 50 tickets for certain matches as long as the 100k is met at the end of the season.That is still going to be difficult to do with so many ST holders.If not impossible!
Correct up to 100,000 over a season offered! Offered is the key. I am not sure how carefully Newham will enforce this contractual clause in the first season though
OK got ya Sean.Thanks for that.
So as I see it the sums don’t add up and Sean is saying the Newham Community tickets are just notional and really ‘window dressing’ for the funding deal, whereas in reality there’s no way of fulfilling this undertaking and Newham are turning a blind eye to the situation.
Bit cynical?
…..and a very strong smell of fish about these Third-Party companies having so many tickets available – someone’s making big money on the backs of the ‘real’ fans!
I think these third party companies are buying from season ticket holders who are making a mark up then the ticket company charges a big service fee and delivery on top. Whether it is legal is another subject. Technically you can’t resell your ticket without permission from the club as your ticket is non transferable. Technically you would be classed as tout if you do and subject to a fine if caught.
All three websites are listed on the Premier League unauthorised list of ticket sellers https://www.premierleague.com/legal/safe-ticket-buying
So many tickets being available to individual Third-Party companies would make you think there was a certain degree of ‘organisation’ about the availibilty of these tickets, over and above the odd Season Ticket Holder selling them on – seems very fishy to me – a possible candidate for a real ‘drains up’ to find where these tickets came from!
If I were investigating this I’d buy up a good number of these tickets and trace them back to the supposed Owners – this stuff illegal and immoral on every level and shouldn’t be tolerated!
100% MM.!!! 🙂
Blimey, someone agreeing with me – that makes a nice change – cheers!
Got these snide pampers Michael they fell of the back of a lorry ? They’re called DAMPERS ! Thinking of asking Sean to punt them to the sisters ??
But Ffs don’t tell the premier league . Com , they might want a bit of the movement ? 🙂
Love the painting mate ? Screams a man of taste ? 🙂
Which takes me back to the concern i raised several months ago. How do we who live abroad manage to get a valid couple of tickets to come and watch a game ? I tried and tried and tried all season last year, no way. This year, we are in a bigger stadium and it is worse. How do we take the risk of buying from these companies, travel from far away just to watch a game, and get to the gate to be denied access ? It is not even a question of how much you have to pay for a ticket anymore, it becomes a complete gamble (with your time, your money, and your emotions). It is not fair and it is not what football is about.
West ham have a special overseas quota dunlopio ? I read it somewhere ?
Also if s/t holders are pu ting their seat ? How do the buyers use his pass ?
So there must be a legal printer barcode to print them ??
Now it really stinks ??
Questions need asking to verify the concerns of fans surely ?? 🙁 🙁
These sorts of companies will always find a way of getting tickets for any events,football or otherwise.It will never stop.Its a none story really.I don’t mean your article Sean.Only the reality that this won’t be stopped in the near future or in the long-term.If people can make money they will find a way of doing it for sports,music or any events no matter what regulations or laws that are brought in imo.
Absolutely correct tone ! But there’s 50 k supporters who are on the s/t list ! Who would love to be able to purchase a ticket at the going rate ?
The club aren’t doing enough , they will ban a supporter from standing up but not for touting, let’s face it it isn’t all supporters selling their match ticket is it !
Its a back hander stitch up and the club need to sort it ? Stinks !! 🙁
Smells like calamari , to many tentacles ?
What has the club got to say Sean ! If its touting then they could report the company’s involved a involve the police ?
Its just another stitch up against the fans !
The club should act if they have any feeling for the supporters ?
So don’t ask Brady as it might soil the brand , lol.
This happened the other week and the site went down ??
Ask the club to respond if possible ! 🙁 🙁
Johnboy it is happening at all clubs & was happening when we were at Upton Park.You cant blame the board for everything you know lol If fans are selling on their tickets to third parties then it is something that has been happening around football grounds for years.It is the tout on the street now turned in to companies on the web.Look on them they have tickets for all big teams.Old Trafford,Emirates,Stamford Bridge even bloody Leicester now ha ha
Agree tone but they are getting the tickets from somewhere in vast numbers and there’s someone giving them the right to do it , who else has the power to sort it but the club ?
It can be stopped if it wants to , not fully but enough to keep it to small time punting ?
Big scale in investigated means a cover up ?? A conspiracy ?? Where’s me wet pants there’s one coming . Haha 🙂
Absolutely Johnboy.If it is a large scale problem it needs addressing I agree.I won’t be damp patching my underwear yet though ha ha
At them prices tone ? Everyone needs a protective garment ! Lol.haha 🙂
Yeah these companies sell out tickets in the theatre section as Bambi on Ice.Unfortunately the lead man is rarely available so his understudy Biggins has to fill in 🙂
Lol Bambi is never available for his own show is he??
But don’t mention it or a list will come out about how many games Payet & Lanzini have missed in one season to justify three years of the Bambi debacle.
That’s how he ended up doing porridge ! Haha 🙂
Dick Turpin was another one rads ? Stand and dribble ? 🙂
I hope that if season ticket holders are found to have lent their tickets to others to be touted they have their ST’s immediately rescinded and put into a ballot for all of us on the waiting list. It is quite possible that touts or other supporters have bought season tickets with only the thought of using them to enhance their own bank accounts, the sooner they are rooted out the better for all of us.
Also I am not sure but if ST’s and any membership cards carried a photo of the card holder this would be a cheap way to negate some of the fraudulent activity as they could be checked randomly to catch a few of those out. It is an administrative overhead but from a security perspective its benefits are clear.
Yes, but you wonder if the Club want the source of these tickets to be looked into too closely.
Someone’s obviously making an awful lot of money here, and it would be easy to find the source if they wanted too!
There was a donkey in a C/B sombrero touting the Queenie v Bournemouth last week , acompanyd by a bloke in budgie smugglers selling leeks !! 🙂 .
They kept getting small packages from a small bloke in a roller in a Toulouse letreque outfit ? Just saying ? 🙂
Sean I’d be more concerned that the queue doesn’t seem to have moved forward from the Man City tickets post. I know the ticket office is slow but those same poor buggers on the photo will be knackered after 4 days of waiting for tickets:)
Give jenks a ring ? 🙂 !
ST holders have a plastic card, not paper tickets. So just how CAN ST holders issue official paper tickets except through the club? They can’t, can they? So WTFIGO??
If the club wanted to cut this out, they could do it VERY easily. They could pay the ‘tout’ agency for the seat. When they get the paper ticket, they find who the ST holder is and ban them. They subtract the costs of buying the ticket and a healthy dose of admin from any remaining value on the ticket.
I know the box office is generally (highly) understaffed to making buying tickets a protracted, tortuous process – Can’t be a fun job!
Maybe it is deliberate on the behalf of the club, so that it can make a fortune just from the phone queueing system??…Let alone other snied ways; e.g. I was unable to use my e-purse to buy my ST; why don’t they simply refund MY MONEY?…It is actually an interest free loan etc etc – Not v palatable when the directors are getting 6% or more on their loans!…Definitely leaves a very unpleasant taste; do I want to be saying these things about my club? NO!
So it does raise the question: Why doesn’t WHU stamp it out if it is so easy? It’s all v suspicious.
I am in a little group of ST friends around me (I do have friends!…Agreed; it IS v weird, but true), and we have an informal swapping system amongst ourselves for 1/19th of the cost of the ST per match, so no profit. It does mean every now and then one of us can invite a friend / relative when someone in the group can’t make it. Simples!
I often wonder what all the clubs do to eradicate these leaches from sport, it appears from hearing from reports regarding senior officials within football and the IOC that they see ticketing as a way to fatten their excessive salaries and instead of clamping down on the corruption and black market for tickets they are willing participants in the business. Many of them should no longer be at the wheel of our sports or indeed any vehicle due to suffering from a blind eye and a deaf ear when it comes to the long suffering fans.