English fans face Ashes rip-off
The Ashes might be 11 months away, but Cricket Australia already seems to be getting itself in a mess over ticketing
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
The Ashes might be 11 months away, but Cricket Australia already seems to be getting itself in a mess over ticketing. In The Times, Geoffrey Dean says that Australia are worried that too many English fans will buy tickets:
Officials here still have nightmares about the sea of red jerseys that made up the majority of the crowd for the Brisbane and Melbourne internationals during the Lions’ rugby union tour in 2001. The feeling is that there is enough demand from home supporters to fill the smaller grounds, such as in Adelaide and Perth.
The Daily Telegraph's Paul Bolton goes one step further, warning that England fans face being ripped-off. He quotes Paul Burnham of the Barmy Army:
What you are going to get is a lot of Australians who are not particularly interested in cricket, buying tickets and then selling them on the black market. The same thing happened in Barbados when the West Indies authorities said that only 40 per cent of tickets would be sold to English fans, but it ended up more like 95 per cent. The touts made a killing.
Martin Williamson is executive editor of ESPNcricinfo and managing editor of ESPN Digital Media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa