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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
As told to Christian Koch

I lost nearly £3,000 on football ticket scams – it’s scarily common

Football Lloyds Bank UEFA Champions League
Sport seating chair in row / background pattern.
Ticket scams are big business, with fraudsters operating across every sport. Photograph: Thank you for your assistant/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Sam, a tech-savvy millennial from Manchester, describes how he fell prey to ticketing cons not once, but twice … and how he now fights to stop the fraudsters

“For football fans, Champions League matches are huge events but tickets are almost impossible to get hold of from official sources. Tickets that are resold go for silly money, sometimes thousands of pounds above market value. Even so, when I found tickets for the Chelsea-Barcelona game on a classified ads site in early 2018, I didn’t hesitate to snap them up. Yes, the £2,000 price tag was steep, but they included hospitality. What’s more, it was a rare opportunity to watch the likes of Messi, Piqué and Suárez in the flesh, plus enjoy a trip to London with friends.

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