UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has spoken to Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp following the German’s criticism over how Champions League final tickets are allocated and said “it’s the system that works”.
Klopp gave his backing to Liverpool fans’ group Spirit of Shankly last week after the organisation accused UEFA of “ripping off” supporters wishing to attend the showpiece match against Real Madrid in Paris later this month.
There are 75,000 tickets available but each club has received just 19,618, while a further 12,000 were put on general sale via a ballot which closed last month, with the remainder going to the UEFA ‘family’ of sponsors and officials. More than one-fifth of Liverpool’s allocation (categories one and two) will cost between £410 and £578. Almost 56 per cent are priced at £125, with nearly a quarter £50.
Klopp said last week: “It is absolutely not right, but it happens everywhere. It doesn’t make it better, just in this specific case you are not only paying more than last time for a ticket, but you only get 50 per cent of the tickets and the rest goes to people who pay thousands and thousands for the tickets.”
Ceferin and Klopp are understood to have each other’s numbers, and the Slovenian said: “I explained the same thing to one of the coaches of the two (finalist) teams a couple of days ago and I can do it here. I explained it to him a bit more and took much more time because I went through every single number.
“From the revenues from the finals, UEFA gets 6.5 per cent and 93.5 per cent goes to the clubs. From the other matches 100 per cent of the revenues goes to the clubs. Fans of both teams get 20,000 tickets each. If sponsors that pay 100 or more million euros sponsorship – of which 93.5 per cent goes to the same clubs – get some tickets, it’s part of a contractual obligation that we have.
“UEFA doesn’t get more tickets than the others. Some tickets go to the market, some tickets go to the fans and some go to the partners. It’s not UEFA. I’m not giving tickets for free to my friends or selling to my friends. It’s the system that works, and clubs couldn’t function differently.
“For us, not much will change if all the tickets will be 10 euros, but it will change a lot for the clubs. A lot.”
