TOKYO, June 19: Ticket touts are estimated to be making thousands of dollars from fans desperate to watch the final World Cup matches and football authorities said Wednesday it was very difficult to stop black market deals.
A quarterfinal clash between tournament favourites Brazil and England on Friday is being heralded as the World Cup final that should have been, with black market prices for tickets to the game spiralling out of control.
“My best mate is flying out here especially to watch the England-Brazil game,” said Graeme Baldwin, a trainee lawyer working in Tokyo.
“I have not been able to get a ticket for him down the official channels so we will have to buy them off the black market. He is prepared to pay up to US$1,500,” he said.
The face value of tickets to the match range in price from US$125 to US$300 but have sold out, apart from small allocations for the respective national football associations, forcing people to turn to the black market where tickets are fetching between US$700 and 1,200, fans said.
“We are doing our best (to block touting),” said David Will, vice president of football’s governing body FIFA.
“We are working with security people here in Japan to try and stop this, but it is extremely difficult,” he told AFP.
Aside from corporate sponsors’ tickets, each ticket bears an individual’s name on which can be traced to an original source, making it harder for the scalpers to do business, said Will, but he conceded that “if someone buys four tickets then we can’t stop them from selling them at an enormous price.”
“It’s the same with any major sporting event unfortunately. Always some tickets get into the wrong hands and are sold at inflated prices... We are sorry this is happening.”
The presence of a name on the ticket is only a deterrent if the identity of the bearer is checked at the gate, but pledges by World Cup organisers to do so have not been borne out in practice, meaning many people can enter the stadium with re-sold tickets, fans said.
One thousand remaining, legitimate tickets have been offered to the Brazilian and English football associations respectively to sell to their fans, said Glenn Johnston, spokesman for Japan Organising Committee for the 2002 FIFA World Cup (JAWOC).
“If they decide not to accept them they will be sold (over the Internet),” he said, adding that such tickets were rejected by the English and Danish football associations prior to their second round game last Saturday.
All other extra tickets are being sold to the public through the FIFA website and by telephone but this has simply added to fans’ desperation as the lines and servers have been totally overloaded.
“I’ve already spent a fortune here in the last two weeks and it looks as though I am going to have to buy a ticket from a tout as there is no other way,” sighed Neil Rowe, a 27-year-old pilot from the United Kingdom.
“No one wants to pay the touts because they are scum, but my friends and I have tried the FIFA site and the telephone and it is hopeless.”
The price of black market tickets to the final are even more extortionate, with some touts quoting a minimum of 4,000 dollars.
“The prices are outrageous, the touts here are making a fortune,” exclaimed Kevin Miles, international co-ordinator for the English Football Supporters’ Association.
“People have sold houses to come out here and I know a number who have taken out another mortgage,” he said. “They will spend the next few years paying off this holiday.”
Some 26 scalpers have so far been arrested in Japan, but many more remain, hanging around stadiums and at nearby train stations before matches.
Brisk business is also being done in Tokyo bars during the build up to the England-Brazil match at the end of the week, fans said.—AFP