Back in January 2025 Chelsea Supporters Trust (CST) did an update on ticket touting and the secondary ticketing market and asked Chelsea supporters if they had any examples where they knew or suspected a seat had been sold via ticket exchange that had ended up on the secondary market or they knew of a Chelsea supporter that had purchased a ticket through a secondary market to send it to [email protected] to investigate but copy in [email protected] as well so we can see the issues they are facing.
Since January we have been provided by CST members with a number of examples of suspected touted tickets and we have forwarded them to Chelsea FC and ask them to investigate each example. We have recently been updated by Chelsea’s tout investigation team and other than some outstanding investigations, all the examples we provided to the club they have confirmed that all the tickets we shared with them were all touted.
Chelsea FC like all Premier Clubs have a tout investigation team (who get results, do ticket checks on match days, cancel accounts and ban people) who have carried out the investigations into the examples we have shared with them.
In nearly every example the supporter in question had shared with us a photo of the ticket from the purchaser’s phone who were quite happy to share the information and how much they had paid for the tickets. Most of the tickets had been initially sold by an unsuspecting Chelsea ST holder via the ticket exchange and the majority of tickets had then been sold by livefootballtickets.net.
We have now been advised by Chelsea that from the Premier League games last season we provided examples of likely touted tickets that their investigations have revealed 150 memberships have now been cancelled, those accounts were then linked to another 300+ membership accounts by friends and family and they too have been cancelled and sanctions also issued against a Chelsea season ticket holder and a Club Chelsea account holder.
Thanks to those Chelsea supporters who provided information. We still have further examples of touting being investigated by the club that we are waiting feedback on. If any CST members have sent in any touting examples separately to Chelsea and have not yet heard back or received an acknowledgement from the club let the CST know and we will follow this up for you.
Chelsea FC have implemented a new ticket selling system for 2025/26 via Ticketmaster and they see this change as supporting them in their efforts to tackle ticket touting. It is too early to see what the impact will be on tackling touting with digital ticketing but at CST we will be observing closely to see if tickets are going to real fans.
The introduction of digital ticketing has not stopped the touts though with livefootballtickets.net already having over 1000 tickets listed for the friendlies against Bayer Leverkusen and AC Milan and over 2000 tickets listed for Crystal Palace. We appreciate there will be speculative and non-existent tickets amongst those listed but equally we are sure that the tout gangs and bot gangs will be looking at every avenue possible to stay one step ahead of Chelsea and will have sourced actual tickets and may have purchased 100s of £15 ticket transfer memberships to facilitate this and then spreading their ticket transfers across many 1000s of memberships to try to stay one step ahead of the club.
We know that the tout and secondary ticketing markets were out of control for both home and away Chelsea games last season. We know that organised gangs who had in the past infiltrated VWR had now also infiltrated Chelsea’s ticket exchange and we have shared an example with the club how this was done via the ticket exchange so a bot could scrape and buy every ticket listed on the ticket exchange hence why some of our Members have shared their experience of listing their match tickets at anti-social hours to still find it was sold on the ticket exchange within seconds.
We know Chelsea FC have been preparing for the new season and digital implementation but we have said to them the more communication the better on touting would be helpful especially as it is one of the main reasons for implementing digital ticketing.
We have said to the club it would be helpful in future communications to share key data with supporters and suggested to them that actual numbers are communicated to supporters to provide reassurance what the club is doing around ticket touting and perhaps do some myth busting at same time e.g. touting at Stamford Bridge is mainly ST holders selling on their tickets when we doubt very much that this is the case. A good starting point would be the club’s next touting communication update could share touting results for 2024/25 season that includes the following:
- How many Memberships cancelled
- How many ST cancelled
- How many Club Chelsea memberships cancelled
- Outcome from games that had Ticket Collection Points last season.
If during the course of the season you have any examples where your know a seat has been purchased from a tout or on the secondary ticketing 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.
(A downloadable copy of this update can be found here)
