The only football ticket I’ve ever bought from a tout was for the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester City and United at Wembley last year. It cost me more than a third of my monthly rent. After the tout had satisfied himself that I wasn’t a cop he told me that the ticket was ‘one and a half’ and that I could collect it from his pal. ‘My mate’s in the bookies, ’cause it’s bent round here with the Old Bill.’ In the bookmakers there were horses on the telly, beer in the air, and football on everyone’s lips. A thin man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth gave me a ticket in a Club Wembley branded envelope, and I handed over £150.
Buying multiple gig tickets on several credit cards and selling them for a profit is not only legal but smiled on: the Conservative MP Sajid Javid called such touts ‘entrepreneurs’. But touting football tickets is a criminal offence, punishable with a fine up to £5000 and a ban from all matches for up to ten years. Similar laws are in place for the Olympics, with a maximum fine of £20,000. The Met have been stepping up their arrests of football touts since the beginning of last year, on the reasonable assumption that they are likely to be involved in selling Olympic tickets too. ‘What we have uncovered shows that organised crime networks of the highest level which are known to us are involved in ticketing offences,’ according to the head of Operation Podium.
[Continued here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/07/05/harry-stopes/among-the-touts/ ]
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