its not just Thomas cook all the commercial partners will get a certain number of tickets for games and finals as well, after all if you were the guy doing the western union deal for £5m a year for a sleeve patch only for domestic games you’d obviously want some tickets for staff, competitions etc, never mind the ones that pay 2/3/4/5/6x that, I mean do people seriously expect the club sponsors not to get a decent number of tickets for their money?
Indeed.
If we're going to applaud the club for the consistent upturn in commercial performance and closing the gap on those clubs above us in financial terms, then this is something that we're going to have to make peace with. When companies are paying out £m's annually then they will, rightly, expect access to fixtures to be included as part of the package. My wife works for a former partner of the club's and as a result i've been with her to a few games as a guest of theirs, and another thing to note is that there does also tend to be a lot of Liverpool fans in there as well. Not all, obviously, but when I went I wasn't alone in being a Red, and for some it wound up being a chance to take their lad that they might not have otherwise had. It isn't all bad in that respect.
The far bigger issues as far as I can see in all of this are: -
1) Touting.
I'm hopeful that the 'ticket inspectors' brought in by the club indicate an appetite at the very least to begin to tackle this, and that they can make an impact. As others have said, it really shouldn't be very difficult to track down the source of touted tickets, providing that appetite to do so is there to begin with. Those individuals and companies holding one or multiple season tickets and/or memberships, with linked credits, and buying simply to sell on at a profit - those are the people that need to be identified, banned and their season ticket/membership revoked and made available to the next person in line. From there, be proactive in looking at what can be done to prevent further touting, rather than relying on reacting after the fact.
2) 'Neutral' allocations.
Specifically UEFA, for their finals. A sizeable portion of available tickets (around 1/3?) are set aside for their 'neutral' areas, which are intended to ensure that 'anyone has access and is able to attend X competition', or something akin to that, according to UEFA. That's all well and good, but in reality, all that happens is anyone either looking to make an easy profit, or who support a club still involved at the time of the ballot, will collectively apply, perhaps multiple times, and then when the final comes around, the supporters of the two remaining clubs will find themselves paying ridiculous mark-ups to buy tickets from someone who either had no intention of attending anyway, or a supporter of another club that didn't make it. If we make the final it will be the same, the 'neutral section' will be Liverpool. As it was in Istanbul. I paid £250 to a Chelsea fan for my ticket for Istanbul. He had applied assuming they would make it, and when they didn't he saw the chance to make some money. Of course, the ticket had his name on it, but as we all know, the annual declarations of 'rings of steel' around the stadium ensuring that tickets are used by those assigned, and that forgeries are identified and stopped, are complete myth. If UEFA are going to insist on continuing on with these 'neutral' sections and associated ballots (which I honestly don't think they should, for the record), then they really need to look at their process around assigning tickets, ensuring that they can be returned rather than sold on, and that adequate processes are in place to facilitate that. Send the returns back to the two clubs involved and allow the thousands currently having to turn to touts the ability to access tickets through the right channels, at face value. Right now it's a joke and achieves nothing other than imposing an additional financial cost on those actually wanting to see their club in a final, whilst lining the pockets of the opportunists.
