November 3 – Tickets to watch Liverpool at Anfield are always in demand, leading to unscrupulous behaviour among ticket touts, and online sites claiming to have the best seats in the house. The club though have taken action shutting down 100,000 fake ticketing accounts while issuing 75 lifetime bans and 136 indefinite suspensions.
With the proliferation of online sites, an increasing number of fans have been conned and defrauded. The club have warned supporters to only buy tickets through official channels.
The club also said most of the bans and suspensions related to “unauthorised selling of season tickets, memberships or hospitality tickets. The number of accounts deactivated includes those cancelled following investigations and others blocked from sales or ballots due to suspicious online activity, or identified as bots.”
“A further 5,670 accounts are currently under review by the club for suspicious activity, including supplying persons who have recently been charged by Merseyside police for fraud related to ticket touting. A total of 1,500 tickets were canceled across the 23-24 season, either part of mass cancellations or from account holders who had already received sanctions, and the tickets were made available for resale.”
With gameday tickets always at a premium, with the average price of tickets hovering over $250, experiencing the Reds in person doesn’t come cheaply.
The waiting list for season tickets is estimated to be in the decades, not years. One person reported being around 20,000th on the list after starting at 26,000 in 2010 so getting seats to watch Liverpool live is forcing fans to be creative.
The club have said that they will continue to invest in anti-touting measures, and have “more boots-on-the-ground operations” in and around Anfield on matchdays, however, monitoring websites is a far more challenging proposition.
Contact the writer of this story, Nick Webster, at moc.l1734862033labto1734862033ofdlr1734862033owedi1734862033sni@o1734862033fni1734862033