A cautionary ticket tale from Arsenal...scary

[Simster]

Tomorrow is 'Sold Out' - and yet again there will be several hundred empty seats.

Actually I reckon it'll prove to be one of the biggest gates of the season. I wouldn't be surprised to see the gate announced at over 21,000.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I quite often buy four or five tickets for away games on behalf of family and friends. One friend I sometimes buy a ticket for lives up north and he comes along if we're away somewhere near where he lives. As we often meet at the ground this is when he gives me the cash for his ticket. As the ticket was purchased from the club in his name is this touting?

No.

But, apparently, it would be touting if someone else took the ticket.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Surely most supporters would applaud the arrest of ticket touts? How were the police to know that someone accepting a sum of cash and handing over a ticket outside a football ground wasn't a tout? Especially when the law says that ANY sale of football tickets except through authorised channels is illegal?

So I don't condemn the police on this one - they should do more about touting, and genuine supporters who want to recycle tickets to mates without making a profit should have the common sense to do it behind closed doors.

Although surely it would have been easy for police on the spot to confirm how much money had changed hands, how much the ticket was worth and therefore if any profit had been made ? Assuming he's telling the truth then the police could have saved a lot of time and money by asking a few questions and using some common sense rather than arresting him.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I think this paragraph is the rather damming one in this case. However, when Graham turned up to collect the ticket from me before the Milan game, he gave me the cash for it, and from nowhere, the police swooped. Before I had even given him the ticket. I was arrested for ticket touting.

I shall be witnessing a similar transaction this afternoon - at a branch of Costa, in Lewes. Should I call the police?

 

[Westdene Seagull]

I shall be witnessing a similar transaction this afternoon - at a branch of Costa, in Lewes. Should I call the police?

You're a potential GRASS then ?

 

[Lord Bracknell]

You're a potential GRASS then ?

loose lips and all that, maybe i could learn a trick or two

 

[Westdene Seagull]

loose lips and all that, maybe i could learn a trick or two

I'm not sure loose lips are EVER a good thing

 

[Dirk Gently]

Although surely it would have been easy for police on the spot to confirm how much money had changed hands, how much the ticket was worth and therefore if any profit had been made ? Assuming he's telling the truth then the police could have saved a lot of time and money by asking a few questions and using some common sense rather than arresting him.

What's their incentive? They have their arrest statistics to worry about ..............

 

[Westdene Seagull]

What's their incentive? They have their arrest statistics to worry about ..............

Oh you cynic !!!!!

 

[Weezle]

This happens at our club too.

I sold my mate's ticket to someone on NSC for £20 to the north stand for the Ipswich game as my mate couldn't make the game. I met them outside the North Stand and handed over the ticket and they gave me £20. I then had a steward approach me and asked me why I had just been given £20 so I told him. He informed me I was breaking the law and he was going to inform the police. After a conversation lasting much longer than it should I promised not to do it again and they let the matter go.

Makes no sense to me. Surely it's a good thing to fill an empty seat and give others the opportunity to see the game. The club will even print off a paper ticket for another individual if you ask them. What's the difference?

 

[Vegas Seagull]

Tell em you were selling an envelope for £20. What is in it is not their business

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Here's an interesting extract from the speech to parliament in 1994, made by the government minister (David Maclean) responsible for introducing the law that is being used to arrest people outside The Emirates. It was made at the conclusion of the parliamentary process that finalised the wording of the legislation.


I want to make the position clear. The essential feature of the clause is not to deal with ticket touting per se, or with some of the problems that sporting organisations should be controlling. They are not going to pass the buck to the Government and order police resources to be used to control tickets for their matches when they should be doing that job themselves. The Government will become involved and will use the powers when we witness public disorder, or when public disorder begins to increase at any other sporting matches which necessitates action in the same way that it necessitated action at football matches. I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friends on that point.

I must inform the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde that we shall not be telling the police what they should do in this matter. The law is perfectly clear. It does not penalise the individual who plans to go to a match, discovers that he cannot go and passes his ticket to a friend. The law does not catch such people. So I hope that on that basis I have been able to reassure my hon. Friends that we are not introducing measures that we intend to use merely to clobber ticket touting, out of some anti-market feeling or spite. We are introducing powers that I will advise the Secretary of State to use only if we should witness public disorder at sporting events similar to the disorder that we have witnessed at football matches.


The law was intended to help prevent disorder. It wasn't introduced to let clubs use the police to control ticket sales.

 

[The Optimist]

The law was intended to help prevent disorder. It wasn't introduced to let clubs use the police to control ticket sales.[/QUOTE]

Isn't that always the way though. A law or policy or something is introduced for a particular reason and then gets misused.