City supporter groups and fan representatives have written to the club’s chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, expressing their ongoing concerns about ticket pricing and season ticket arrangements.

They are asking the club to follow up on its promise made last June to find solutions, and requesting lower or reduced season ticket prices for 2024-25.

In the same week, Chelsea fans voiced their concerns about the practice of ticket reselling and ticket touting.

The resale of tickets for English football matches is illegal in the UK, but this has not stopped them from being sold on foreign resale sites.

It has become an issue close to home for Chelsea, as the club’s owner and chairman, Todd Boehly, is invested in one such business, Vivid Seats, via his holding company, Eldridge Industries.

In 2017, Eldridge Industries led a round of funding for sports betting company DraftKings. In 2021 DraftKings then invested in a ticket resale website Vivid Seats, purchasing part of Eldridge Industries’ existing stake. An almost farcical money-go-round.

“We are pleased to announce this investment from DraftKings, one of the country’s leading and most visible sports tech entertainment companies,” Boehly said in October 2021.

“Today’s announcement is a nod to Vivid Seats’ growing and powerful ticketing marketplace, and will aid the company with its overall mission to empower fans to Experience It Live.”

What they really mean by “empowering fans to Experience It Live” is exploiting those fans by raising ticket prices or massively inflating them on the secondary market.

Ticket resale outlets are one of the many unnecessary intermediaries that make money merely from the fact money is being spent, adding nothing but taking plenty away.

In this way, they are exploiting both the creators of this entertainment and those who want to enjoy it. 

It is no surprise that an owner of a top-level football club is involved in something like this, and many will no doubt want the practice of ticket reselling to be legalised in English football.

The links between Chelsea owner and the ticket resale website, Vivid Seats, became even more apparent last week following a report by the Telegraph which revealed that Boehly was a director and co-owner of the Vivid Seats website.

It is no surprise to see such close links between businesses like DraftKings and Vivid Seats, as gambling companies and ticket resale sites are both designed to take money from and exploit sports fans.

“Vivid Seats currently lists hundreds of Chelsea FC General Admission tickets at significantly inflated prices,” the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust said in a statement on Thursday.

“As these tickets are not sold by the Chelsea FC website, they are considered by the club to be ‘illegal sales.’

“Within the recent CST ticket touting survey, many CST members suggested that Mr Boehly’s connection with Vivid Seats is a ‘breach of trust’ and could be a conflict of interest.

“These recent reports are very disappointing, and it is within Mr Boehly’s best interests to investigate these issues and address supporters’ concerns — we do not believe it is appropriate for any Chelsea tickets or wider Premier League tickets to be listed on the Vivid Seats website.”

Though the resale of football tickets is illegal in the UK, any fans who have bought tickets for sporting events in the United States will know how rife this practice is, and how inflated and inaccessible tickets for some games can become.

This has been seen during Lionel Messi’s time at Inter Miami, and will most blatantly be on show ahead of the Superbowl this weekend.

An owner involved in a secondary ticket market, reselling tickets for games involving a club they also own, is swindling fans, and shouldn’t be allowed to own said club.

Ticketing issues have regularly been raised by fans across the English football leagues this season.

Supporters at Premier League clubs have come together behind the #StopExploitingLoyalty banner in an attempt to hold clubs to account for treating fans as customers.

Profitability and sustainability rules have been used opportunistically as an excuse for clubs to increase ticket prices across the board.

There has been a growing trend of clubs removing concessionary ticket price bands in an attempt to sell more tickets at standard prices which themselves are rising across the board.

Football is awash with owners trying to bring exploitative capitalism from their other areas of business into the game.

Ticketing is an area where they will apply this most blatantly because they ultimately see football supporters as customers.

This will lead to reduced season ticket allocation as owners believe fans arriving for one-off games will be able, or willing, to pay more than a supporter who wants to attend every game. 

Games will be marketed as one-off events rather than part of a season or linked to generational, historical support (owners referred to such supporters as “legacy fans”) and prices marked up accordingly.

It will also lead to more dynamic pricing, attempts to normalise and eventually legalise resale at inflated prices, and the removal of concessionary pricing.

On the one hand clubs such as Manchester City boast about annual profits and on the other hand they are making it more difficult for fans to support the club at every game by raising prices.

“According to research undertaken by CityXtra, all areas of the Etihad Stadium have seen an increase of at least 15 per cent between the 2021-22 and 2024-25 seasons,” City fan groups pointed out in their letter to Khaldoon al-Mubarak.

“The South Stand has seen increases of 24 per cent. All at a time when there has been huge cost-of-living pressures on supporters.”

City fans also pointed out that buying a “traditional season ticket” has not been possible via a standard sales process since 2019.

They have requested ahead of the 2025-26 season that season ticket prices be frozen or reduced, and the £150 upfront cost of Flexi-Gold Season tickets removed.

Manchester City’s recent FA Cup game against Salford City showed that lower ticket prices can lead to an improved atmosphere, even in a one-sided cup tie such as that.

Clubs should take experiences like this into account when setting price bands and season ticket availability and affordability in the future.