Is the club defrauding loyal supporters?

[Eagleman13]

I don't understand how season tickets bought by foreign "fans" are harder to trace. Surely they have the seat number and name of a person who bought them. Therefore they can contact them or give notice that ticket will be cancelled if they keep selling online.

Correct. I had to go throught the same process that UK based fans did when i had an ST, same as other fans i know out in Spain as well as the islands.

 

[Therealeaglestilidie]

On another subject I put up one of my season tickets for sale on the club resale scheme for the Leicester game. When I got to my seat there was someone sitting in the seat I put up for resale but I haven't had an email from the club confirming that it was sold.

 

[eritheagle]

On another subject I put up one of my season tickets for sale on the club resale scheme for the Leicester game. When I got to my seat there was someone sitting in the seat I put up for resale but I haven't had an email from the club confirming that it was sold.

I'm not sure I did when I couldn't make Brentford game due to illness last season. I think I just saw I had credit and then got the money deducted from this season's ticket.

That game wasn't a sell out either but I've got a really good seat in gallery so think someone just got lucky and bought it

 

[Helmet46]

On another subject I put up one of my season tickets for sale on the club resale scheme for the Leicester game. When I got to my seat there was someone sitting in the seat I put up for resale but I haven't had an email from the club confirming that it was sold.

That’s my mind made up - I’ll get rid of mine on here to members or gold members if I can’t make the game. Club can do one.

 

[Isley46]

The club are not defrauding season ticket holders. CPISA took up this subject with CPFC some time ago and showed them a long list of football ticket sites that had tickets for Palace matches available. The club did some work and warned some season ticket holders that if they sold their seats on ticket sites they could lose their season tickets and some now have for this season.
However some of these season tickets are known to be foreign owned so are more difficult to trace. There are even some tickets on some sites regularly available for sale in the away end!
However there are no Palace tickets for sale on Ticketmaster UK, they do not I believe sell any Premiership football tickets.
The club have have a high take up of memberships (International and Gold) therefore when tickets become available they are always in short supply.
CPISA will continue to question the club over ticketing, ticket windows and ticket allocations.

So you are saying that the club now has so many season ticket holders that want to purchase more tickets (for a game they are already going to) and Gold memberships that want to purchase tickets that most tickets have now been bought up by these additional people within 60 seconds of going on sale?

I don't believe this is the case and the club need to investigate - something is amiss as it looks like there is a script running somewhere (maybe external to ticketmaster or ticketmaster are involved) whereby all the seats are purchased automatically within seconds by an organisation (be it a corporate organisation or hospitality organisation) and then put on resale sites not connected to ticketmaster within minutes of being 'purchased' on ticketmaster. The reason people suspect ticketmaster may be involved is that tickets are 'lost' even though they are sitting in a persons basket waiting for payment confirmation. So only internal ticketmaster scripts can remove such a ticket and move it to another payer.

Palace may not be directly involved in any of this but 'defrauding' if they are involved as they are knowingly selling memberships to fans to buy tickets, that the fan will never be able to purchase.

This wasn't an issue before ticketmaster was involved - tickets were easy to come by even for the FA cup semi's and final - four tickets together - easy to purchase.

How is this affecting the fan base?

People give up trying to purchase tickets and drift away from the club. We used to go as a four (two kids, Mum and Dad) - not season ticket holders as Mrs sometimes works weekends and night games were not good for kids so gold memberships were the way for us. We haven't renewed this year as tickets became hard to buy towards the end of last season and I suspected something was strange was going on.

So last Saturday were watching a live stream of the game, 2-0 down and not such a great performance - weather was fine so I went to cut the grass - came back in when it was 1-2 (had it on the radio outside) and the kids had switched over to the Liverpool game as they said the Palace game was boring and Liverpool were losing 0-1 to Forest.

A match day experience is not just about the on pitch football but also about the community and I'm a believer in supporting your local club (even though I'm not originally from this area and Palace wasn't my first club) - It won't be long before these kids are lost to the club forever as they find other things to occupy their interest - once lost they won't return.

Palace used to be very community focussed but maybe changing to be not so anymore.
Hoovering up of tickets by corporate organisations might be only the start.

 

[Pierre]

I don't understand how season tickets bought by foreign "fans" are harder to trace. Surely they have the seat number and name of a person who bought them. Therefore they can contact them or give notice that ticket will be cancelled if they keep selling online.

The club have the money for the ticket already. They have to be pushed to even investigate this area. When it comes to foreign owned ot could be by an individual or a company. However even contacting them is entirely another matter and getting a response, well who knows!
CPISA try to push to get the club to irradicate touting but it is difficult.
It would be different if the club were not receiving the income from the match tickets. Then there would be more compulsion to solve the issue.

 

[Paaalaaace]

So you are saying that the club now has so many season ticket holders that want to purchase more tickets (for a game they are already going to) and Gold memberships that want to purchase tickets that most tickets have now been bought up by these additional people within 60 seconds of going on sale?

I don't believe this is the case and the club need to investigate - something is amiss as it looks like there is a script running somewhere (maybe external to ticketmaster or ticketmaster are involved) whereby all the seats are purchased automatically within seconds by an organisation (be it a corporate organisation or hospitality organisation) and then put on resale sites not connected to ticketmaster within minutes of being 'purchased' on ticketmaster. The reason people suspect ticketmaster may be involved is that tickets are 'lost' even though they are sitting in a persons basket waiting for payment confirmation. So only internal ticketmaster scripts can remove such a ticket and move it to another payer.

Palace may not be directly involved in any of this but 'defrauding' if they are involved as they are knowingly selling memberships to fans to buy tickets, that the fan will never be able to purchase.

This wasn't an issue before ticketmaster was involved - tickets were easy to come by even for the FA cup semi's and final - four tickets together - easy to purchase.

How is this affecting the fan base?

People give up trying to purchase tickets and drift away from the club. We used to go as a four (two kids, Mum and Dad) - not season ticket holders as Mrs sometimes works weekends and night games were not good for kids so gold memberships were the way for us. We haven't renewed this year as tickets became hard to buy towards the end of last season and I suspected something was strange was going on.

So last Saturday were watching a live stream of the game, 2-0 down and not such a great performance - weather was fine so I went to cut the grass - came back in when it was 1-2 (had it on the radio outside) and the kids had switched over to the Liverpool game as they said the Palace game was boring and Liverpool were losing 0-1 to Forest.

A match day experience is not just about the on pitch football but also about the community and I'm a believer in supporting your local club (even though I'm not originally from this area and Palace wasn't my first club) - It won't be long before these kids are lost to the club forever as they find other things to occupy their interest - once lost they won't return.

Palace used to be very community focussed but maybe changing to be not so anymore.
Hoovering up of tickets by corporate organisations might be only the start.

Think this is spot on.....very good post

 

[SnapperKain]

So you are saying that the club now has so many season ticket holders that want to purchase more tickets (for a game they are already going to) and Gold memberships that want to purchase tickets that most tickets have now been bought up by these additional people within 60 seconds of going on sale?

I don't believe this is the case and the club need to investigate - something is amiss as it looks like there is a script running somewhere (maybe external to ticketmaster or ticketmaster are involved) whereby all the seats are purchased automatically within seconds by an organisation (be it a corporate organisation or hospitality organisation) and then put on resale sites not connected to ticketmaster within minutes of being 'purchased' on ticketmaster. The reason people suspect ticketmaster may be involved is that tickets are 'lost' even though they are sitting in a persons basket waiting for payment confirmation. So only internal ticketmaster scripts can remove such a ticket and move it to another payer.

Palace may not be directly involved in any of this but 'defrauding' if they are involved as they are knowingly selling memberships to fans to buy tickets, that the fan will never be able to purchase.

This wasn't an issue before ticketmaster was involved - tickets were easy to come by even for the FA cup semi's and final - four tickets together - easy to purchase.

How is this affecting the fan base?

People give up trying to purchase tickets and drift away from the club. We used to go as a four (two kids, Mum and Dad) - not season ticket holders as Mrs sometimes works weekends and night games were not good for kids so gold memberships were the way for us. We haven't renewed this year as tickets became hard to buy towards the end of last season and I suspected something was strange was going on.

So last Saturday were watching a live stream of the game, 2-0 down and not such a great performance - weather was fine so I went to cut the grass - came back in when it was 1-2 (had it on the radio outside) and the kids had switched over to the Liverpool game as they said the Palace game was boring and Liverpool were losing 0-1 to Forest.

A match day experience is not just about the on pitch football but also about the community and I'm a believer in supporting your local club (even though I'm not originally from this area and Palace wasn't my first club) - It won't be long before these kids are lost to the club forever as they find other things to occupy their interest - once lost they won't return.

Palace used to be very community focussed but maybe changing to be not so anymore.
Hoovering up of tickets by corporate organisations might be only the start.

Agree with this, there's no way that there's so many season ticket holders wanting to but a ticket that they're sold out within seconds of going live, the only way that can happen is via automation. If the club are saying that's not the case, then they're either very naive about how these things work or they know what's happening and doing sod all about it.

And this BS about not being able to trace foreign tickets, I mean really? How can you not trace them? The club must have contact details, financial details, etc. Are we really selling tickets to mysterious foreign entities with shady details? This isn't the cold war era, we've moved on a bit since then and if someone who owns a ticket is based abroad and doesn't go to a single game, then an email saying "what gives?" would certainly be replied to if they were genuine and wanted the ticket. That just sounds like a 1980's excuse to me.

I think that there's a bit of fobbing off going on when concerns have been raised about tickets. The box office has always been crap and it just sounds like they not that bothered about doing anything.

 

[Eagleman13]

The club have the money for the ticket already. They have to be pushed to even investigate this area. When it comes to foreign owned ot could be by an individual or a company. However even contacting them is entirely another matter and getting a response, well who knows!
CPISA try to push to get the club to irradicate touting but it is difficult.
It would be different if the club were not receiving the income from the match tickets. Then there would be more compulsion to solve the issue.

Can you define 'foreign owned' please.

 

[Spiderman]

Can you define 'foreign owned' please.

Easy, touts 😉

 

[rikz]

I miss the old days where you could turn up in August, sit in the sun in the Arthur and have a whole block to yourself.

This does highlight the massive demand we have while being in the prem, the club really need to push on with the main stand because we're losing so much revenue at the moment. I genuinely belive for cat A games we could sell out a 40,000 seat stadium. Would they all be palace fans, no, but the increase in allocation for away fans, tourists, day trippers, casual palace/football fans would give the club much more revenue.

 

[Dubai Eagle]

The club have the money for the ticket already. They have to be pushed to even investigate this area. When it comes to foreign owned ot could be by an individual or a company. However even contacting them is entirely another matter and getting a response, well who knows!
CPISA try to push to get the club to irradicate touting but it is difficult.
It would be different if the club were not receiving the income from the match tickets. Then there would be more compulsion to solve the issue.

The club make all the investment in the infrastructure & provide the on field entertainment, without which there would be no tickets to sell, and its completely true that they have already been paid for the seat (by a season ticket holder) but what's the point of going digital if its not going to be used to ensure that others, who have invested nothing more than the original value of the season ticket aren't openly selling the seat position on the open market for a profit / selling price far higher than the original value -

Several posters have complained that after logging in at the allotted time (for Tier 1 games) often no additional tickets can be purchased, I would be interested to know - just how many tickets were available to be purchased at 10.00 on that given day ( are we talking a few hundred tickets, or thousands, or ?) & how likely is it that existing season ticket holders were just consistently unlucky that others beat them to the checkout or is there something more sinister going on ?

Also - for almost all online ticketing for events, subscribers have a time limit to complete their purchase - often 10 minutes from being at the front of the queue - how can tickets be removed from baskets within that 10 minutes ? ( or whatever the allotted time is)

It shouldnt be too difficult for the club to look at the log in timeline + purchase log of that 10.00 am opening day sector ( for any given Tier 1 game) to determine if things are being appropriately administered.

 

[Paaalaaace]

So....back from Match today having done a bit more digging. In Main Stand H Block 4 seats in front of me had occupants who had obtained them from livefootballtickets.com. They had paid between £145 and £175. They did support Palace, but they had not been asked if they did or not. They were purchased / available before gold members or season ticket + memberships tickets were made available. So memberships have no chance of obtaining these. They were sold to two groups of 2 sitting next to each other. So still outraged and will pass this info in more exacting detail to CPISA.
HOWEVER.... my friends who sit next to me, one of their number could not attend as off to the boxing tonight. They sold their ticket in the correct manner through the club and got £25 for it. We asked the guy who purchased it from the club how much he paid....£75....so triple what was refunded to the season ticket holder....outraged about that too. Honestly the whole thing stinks.

 

[Paaalaaace]

The club have the money for the ticket already. They have to be pushed to even investigate this area. When it comes to foreign owned ot could be by an individual or a company. However even contacting them is entirely another matter and getting a response, well who knows!
CPISA try to push to get the club to irradicate touting but it is difficult.
It would be different if the club were not receiving the income from the match tickets. Then there would be more compulsion to solve the issue.

As promised I have now reported all I know in detail to CPISA as suggested.

 

[Dubai Eagle]

I just had a look at livefootball.com & ( for example) the upcoming Liverpool game they are advertising couple hundred tickets available overall & you can review where you want to be in the stadium, they stipulate which stand / blocks they have tickets in, some blocks they only have a single ticket in some they have a few more - so clearly someone is making these tickets available to them -
If we assume that its not club players / staff because I would imagine that they have a block together, not dotted around the ground, it kinda must be - Either the club have released them, which to me makes no sense because we can already sell out our season ticket allocation (With a waiting list) there seems little value in separately administering a couple hundred tickets to receive a few extra quid per seat (in the grand scheme of things / the finances involved with running a PL football club)

It would seem that certain season ticket holders are making them available to certain websites to make a profit on the transaction - which is one of the things that digitalization & the club resale platform was brought in to discourage - I am pretty sure that third party sales / rent (outside of the clubs own resale platform) would be considered as profiteering & against the rules by which the season ticket sale was administered - surely the club has an obligation to stamp that kind of thing out ?

Also - in the Palace Man Utd fixture last season where we won 4.0, this is the only time I used the resale option ( I was travelling) my seat was filled by a teenager (according to the people that sit around my seat) & I received £33.40 in my resale account, now I dont know if thats a full value / adult ticket or a junior ticket price, but to me it seemed fair - I would of course have been a tad miffed if it had been a full adult & only received £25.00 ( as in the example above) especially if the person sitting in the seat had claimed to have paid £75.00 for it -

 

[Phil’s Barber]

Were there really £75 seats on sale in the main stand for the Man Utd. fixture or has the club charged more for this resale ticket? I think the most i have ever paid for a seat in the main stand as a Gold Member is about £54.

 

[jason7]

In answer to the price I’m sure £70 was the price for a ticket yesterday.
To answer the ticket sweep up,an answer by the club on how many Gold membership have been sold this season would be good( or at least the buying patten going back over last 3 seasons).
I would guess sole company’s have bought or 200 gold membership, and set up a programme were at 10am on sale day the bot sweeps up blocks/ rows of seats within seconds.I know it’s far fetched but maybe the club needs to stagger selling to members on a points system.Ie members with 9000/6000 points buy at 10am,5999/3000 at 11.Loyalty would then be restored.

 

[Phil’s Barber]

I miss the old days where you could turn up in August, sit in the sun in the Arthur and have a whole block to yourself.

This does highlight the massive demand we have while being in the prem, the club really need to push on with the main stand because we're losing so much revenue at the moment. I genuinely belive for cat A games we could sell out a 40,000 seat stadium. Would they all be palace fans, no, but the increase in allocation for away fans, tourists, day trippers, casual palace/football fans would give the club much more revenue.

I agree with this, the need for the new main stand (and increased capacity) is HUGE!

Im a Gold Member and also on the Season Ticket waiting list and getting 2 match day tickets together from the Club has become almost impossible. (Thank you to those on here who help me out).

I do feel we will fill the new ground (Circa 34,000) with no trouble at all and it will hopefully enable loyal supporters to get tickets a bit easier and without the current stress and thus promote a growing fan base into the future.

 

[jason7]

I agree with this, the need for the new main stand (and increased capacity) is HUGE!

Im a Gold Member and also on the Season Ticket waiting list and getting 2 match day tickets together from the Club has become almost impossible. (Thank you to those on here who help me out).

I do feel we will fill the new ground (Circa 34,000) with no trouble at all and it will hopefully enable loyal supporters to get tickets a bit easier and without the current stress and thus promote a growing fan base into the future.

Don’t think that an increase in ground capacity will help,the ticket system needs to be looked into by the club.
These bots will just hoover up more tickets.

 

[Paaalaaace]

I just had a look at livefootball.com & ( for example) the upcoming Liverpool game they are advertising couple hundred tickets available overall & you can review where you want to be in the stadium, they stipulate which stand / blocks they have tickets in, some blocks they only have a single ticket in some they have a few more - so clearly someone is making these tickets available to them -
If we assume that its not club players / staff because I would imagine that they have a block together, not dotted around the ground, it kinda must be - Either the club have released them, which to me makes no sense because we can already sell out our season ticket allocation (With a waiting list) there seems little value in separately administering a couple hundred tickets to receive a few extra quid per seat (in the grand scheme of things / the finances involved with running a PL football club)

It would seem that certain season ticket holders are making them available to certain websites to make a profit on the transaction - which is one of the things that digitalization & the club resale platform was brought in to discourage - I am pretty sure that third party sales / rent (outside of the clubs own resale platform) would be considered as profiteering & against the rules by which the season ticket sale was administered - surely the club has an obligation to stamp that kind of thing out ?

Also - in the Palace Man Utd fixture last season where we won 4.0, this is the only time I used the resale option ( I was travelling) my seat was filled by a teenager (according to the people that sit around my seat) & I received £33.40 in my resale account, now I dont know if thats a full value / adult ticket or a junior ticket price, but to me it seemed fair - I would of course have been a tad miffed if it had been a full adult & only received £25.00 ( as in the example above) especially if the person sitting in the seat had claimed to have paid £75.00 for it -

In years gone by Mainstand H Block was used by the club for complimentary tickets for players not playing and / or their family members.