CST members may recall that in June 2023 the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust carried out its regular ticketing survey.
With the demand for Chelsea tickets continuing to greatly exceed supply, there were many issues flagged by Chelsea supporters from ticket availability, virtual waiting room, loyalty points, and away season tickets. The area that that received most comments and concern from the CST membership, however, was around ticket touting and the secondary ticketing market.
Some supporters commented in our survey that they saw little point in reporting examples of touting as they did not think the club would do anything about it.
Since that survey in June 2023, the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust have regularly raised the issue of ticket touting and the continued growth of the secondary market with the club and regularly given the club examples from our membership with specific seat numbers where members have expressed concern that the seat has been sold through a secondary site for a price significantly above face value.
A more recent concern shared with the CST has come from a number of supporters who have told the CST that whenever they are unable to make a home game they have done the right thing and placed their ticket on the ticket exchange and were amazed at the speed at which they were getting sold only to then find at the next home game from their season ticket neighbours that a £300+ paying Chelsea supporter has paid for their seat via a secondary site.
On any occasion a Chelsea supporter has shared such an example with the CST we have passed this on to the club to investigate and all the recent examples we have given to them they have come back and confirmed that despite tickets being sold via the exchange they have ended up on a secondary ticketing site for sale but anyone who purchased these tickets they have cancelled their memberships and any accounts linked to them.
One recent example came from a Chelsea supporter who sold their ticket via the CFC ticket exchange which was then sold via a secondary ticket site. We shared this information with the club who have confirmed that their investigations have revealed that the account who purchased the ticket was a fake account that was linked to other fake accounts by way of friend and family links. All four accounts have been immediately closed and any further tickets that had been purchased by these accounts were all cancelled.
We know it is not easy for the club to tackle some of these secondary sites and we know that like many other Premier League club there are very sophisticated tout gangs targeting Chelsea. Many of those websites that sell and advertise these tickets are based offshore so are hard to close down as they are beyond UK prosecution boundaries.
We know that the club will investigate any enquiries sent on to them and they have banned and will continue to ban suspicious memberships and prevent them from buying tickets that they believe will be sold via online ticket reselling websites. The club regularly bans memberships during the season.
CFC also have done security ticket checks on matchdays or have asked some account holders to come along and collect their match tickets. Both exercises have led to some ticket holders either being ejected from the ground and memberships and in some cases season ticket holders being cancelled.
We also know from Home Office statistics that the number of arrests for tout outside of Stamford Bridge for 2023/24 was the highest in the Premier League and accounted for nearly 50% of all arrests in the Premier League last season.
We know from examples we have shared with the club that they will investigate such matters and they are doing many things to address ticket touting and secondary ticketing but not many Chelsea supporters still know about the work done to date as there has been no large scale communication strategy to Chelsea supporters on action being taken to prevent this.
At present the club website only says this to deter a lone tout or someone selling on tickets at a higher price:
“Ticket touting (scalping) is illegal in the UK and supporters who purchase tickets unofficially will be in possession of an invalid ticket will be refused entry at the stadium. Only buy from official resellers.”
We know that tout and secondary ticketing market are out of control for both home and away Chelsea games. We know that organised gangs will look to infiltrate VWR and also ticket exchange and have shared an example with the club how this can be done via the ticket exchange but still await their response.
The recent website statement prior to the Shamrock Rovers game about selling on tickets in home areas was welcome but a priority in 2025 for Chelsea FC has to be to do much more to get more tickets into hands of club members instead of tickets ending up being sold on secondary market sites.
Members regularly miss out on getting match tickets despite paying £5 extra this season for a membership that no longer offers value for money. Some of the extra money from members should be reinvested in extra staffing resources to greater tackle this serious issue and also much more communication with supporters is needed on how the club is tackling this. We will continue to lobby them on this.
If you have any examples where your know a seat has been sold via ticket exchange that has ended up on the secondary market or you know of a Chelsea supporter that has purchased a ticket through a secondary site provide the seat number row number and stand and send it to [email protected] to investigate.
By all means copy in the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust and/or if you have not heard back or an acknowledgement from the club within two weeks let the CST know and we will follow this up for you.
