The GAA has been urged to tackle ticket touts as tickets to this Sunday’s All Ireland football final are selling for hundreds of euro.
Mayo reached the final with a 2-13 to 0-14 win over Tipperary in the semi-final, while defending champions Dublin qualified after a 0-22 to 2-14 victory over Kerry.
Tickets on website needacticket.ie are selling for several times the face value. The most expensive ticket category is for the Hogan or Cusack stand lower tier, listed at €590 per ticket.
Dermott Jewell of the Consumers Association of Ireland said the GAA needs to actively police its ticket distribution channels to stop touts.
“Significant effort is required to stop touting and whatever efforts the GAA are making, (are) not working. A new review of the ticketing system or the means by which they are distributed to clubs needs to be brought in,” said Mr Jewell.
“The GAA needs to monitor who is distributing tickets or perhaps implement a system where tickets not accounted for must be given back to GAA.”
He said: “The GAA’s eye is off the ball when it comes to touting, it is far too easy to abuse the current ticketing system.
“People have honest intentions and the vast majority of those distributing tickets are open and transparent but clearly there is a cohort who are getting tickets and selling them for way over the odds.
“The GAA is volunteer based and similar to the credit union but it soon discovered that you need proper regulation or you lose control and the GAA have lost control. That’s the reality.”
A private members bill by Fine Gael TD Noel Rock will be introduced this Dáil term that could see touts could face two years in prison.
Currently, there are no laws banning people from selling match or concert tickets at above cost price.
Responding to Mr Jewell’s comments, a spokesman for the GAA said :“The issue of the illegal resale of our match tickets for prices above their face value is a matter of great concern for the GAA.”
“In the last number of years the Association has made a number of steps in this area. There have been, and continue to be, numerous instances where we have been notified of tickets being offered on line for above face value prices and where those tickets are identified they have been immediately cancelled and traced back to the original recipient,” the spokesman said.
‘Exorbitant prices’
The spokesman said the organisation has “also engaged with a number of websites and they have assisted the GAA in stepping in and taking down attempts to offer match tickets for sale on their sites for exorbitant prices.”
“In other instances we have publicly lobbied specific ticket tout websites requesting that they do not facilitate this practice and have also staged a number of operations where we have intercepted individuals seeking to sell on match tickets.”
He said the 82,300 capacity of Croke Park is not enough to cater for the demand for tickets for the All-Ireland football final.
“In a crowd of this significant size, there are only a small handful of tickets which present us with problems. The All-Ireland finals are national events and so every GAA club in Ireland is issued with tickets and the vast majority of these members who receive them behave responsibly.”
The spokesman said “the Consumer Association are no doubt aware that ticket touting exists in Ireland because there are inadequate laws to prevent it, especially in this digital age”.
“Until such time as there is a legal intervention and ticket touting is tackled by the courts and adequate powers are given to the gardaí, all major ticketed public events will be vulnerable,” he said.
Every ticket distributed by the GAA for this match is traceable and the GAA is continuing to monitor the distribution of match tickets in advance of the game, according to the spokesman.
The GAA will take steps where necessary to intervene and cancel tickets wherever possible and take steps against individuals who are found to have been involved in facilitating the touting of our tickets, he said.
The spokesman also said the GAA would welcome a wider discussion on how this issue can be tackled to protect sporting events and concerts for genuine supporters.
Meanwhile, spokesman for Done Deal said it has not banned the outright sale of tickets on the site.
Last year, Done Deal banned the re-sale of any tickets for the match in an effort to eliminate ticket touts.
The spokesman said this year, Done Deal has agreed a process with the GAA around ticket sales for the All-Ireland matches.
The company said it is a breach of the GAA’s policy to re-sell a sports ticket over their original face value.
