With the Cricket World Cup in Wales and England just three months away, tickets for the biggest cricket extravaganza are being sold in the black for prices as high as £12,000.
According to BBC, World Cup organisers will be taking legal action against secondary ticketing sites which are selling tickets at exorbitant prices.
A total of 48 World Cup matches will take place in England and Wales, with 36 listed as being sold out of all non-hospitality tickets on the ICC’s ticketing website.
Tickets for high-profile matches, such as the Pakistan vs India fixture on June 16, originally priced at £150, are being sold for £3,280.
For the sold-out England vs Australia match on June 25, a vendor on Viagogo is marketing two silver tickets, with a face value of £115, for £12,029 each.
“Viagogo is a marketplace and doesn’t buy or sell tickets,” the company said in a statement. “Viagogo provides a platform for third-party sellers to sell tickets to event goers. Event organisers sometimes make claims that they will deny entry to people who have purchased resold tickets. These types of entry restrictions are highly unfair and in our view, unenforceable and illegal.”
Moreover, the ticket site has been alleged to have previously approached England supporters’ group Barmy Army with a request to sell some of its allocation for England matches outside of the World Cup, a claim Viagogo has not denied.
When BBC asked about the claim the company replied: “All tickets on Viagogo are valid and it is perfectly legal to resell a ticket or give it to someone else if you want to.”
But Viagogo is not the only website selling tickets above the price. Stubhub is selling tickets well over their face value as well.
“As a ticketing marketplace, StubHub does not set the price of tickets that appear on our site, the fans do. Importantly, the prices for the tickets mentioned are the ones listed, but as it is often the case, those are not necessarily the prices for which tickets sell,” Stubhub said.
“We are working closely with lawyers to identify secondary ticket sites which infringe our terms and conditions,” a World Cup spokesperson said. “We are taking appropriate enforcement action against them as required.”
The World Cup will take place in England and Wales from May 30 to July 14, with hosts England meeting South Africa at The Oval in the opening match.
