England’s travelling supporters are facing a scramble to watch the Three Lions take on the Netherlands in Wednesday’s Euro’s semi-final.
Fans were left searching for tickets and places to stay in Germany after the team’s nerve-shredding penalty win over the Swiss extended their stay in the tournament. After the celebrations ended, they were faced with the task of tracking down the last available hotel rooms in Dortmund. Tickets for the game are being sold for as much as 20 times their original price on resale websites.
Uefa are only releasing extra tickets for the knock-out stage on a match-by-match basis, so fans buying their tickets from the official FA scheme were warned they face “tight turnarounds and short sale windows” with the sale on Monday not leaving them a lot of time to plans journeys and book flights and hotels. That will mean many fans are at the mercy of resale sites where the cheapest tickets, which would normally go for £70, are being sold for just under £600 — while some of the best seats in the 62,000-capacity ground are listed for as much as £16,000. The search for somewhere to stay is equally fierce, with one leading hotel website boasting that 90 per cent of its rooms in the German city were already booked up.
That leaves hotel rooms selling for thousands of pounds with one, which would normally be available for £60, going for £2,100 on Wednesday.
Given those prices, many fans will opt to stay at home to watch the game. An average audience of 13.6 million watched England win Saturday’s penalty shoot-out and TV bosses will be expecting even more to tune in at 8pm on Wednesday for the semi-final.
Despite the team’s stuttering start to the campaign, England are among the favourites to go all the way in Germany with the Euro 2020 runners-up just one game away from becoming the first English men’s team to reach a major final on foreign soil.
Saturday’s win means the team have reached three semi-finals in four tournaments under manager Gareth Southgate, who says he has used the often personal criticism aimed at him to fuel the successful run through the competition.
