Tickets for Sunderland vs Newcastle United advertised for thousands of pounds on re-sale website

Tickets for Sunderland’s FA Cup clash against Newcastle United are being advertised for sale for thousands of pounds on a ticket re-sale website. 

The Black Cats are due to face the Magpies in the FA Cup on January 6 at the Stadium of Light, the first meeting between the North East foes since October 2015.

Given the lengthy absence of the Wear-Tyne derby due to both clubs' differing fortunes over the last eight years, tickets for the clash are in high demand with Newcastle United handed a 6,000 allocation for the game in Sunderland.

Tickets for the home end at the Stadium of Light were available in three phases to Sunderland fans and were priced at £32 for adults, £29 for over-65s, £24 for under-22s and £14 for under-16s.

Sunderland fans were also advised that ticket forwarding (which allows season ticket holders to gift their ticket to a friend or family member within their network, at no charge, for a home game included on their season ticket) would not be available for the clash.

Despite this, however, one website - Madrid-based FootballTicketsNet - is offering resale tickets for both the away and home ends for eye-watering fees. Tickets in the home end at the Stadium of Light are priced at £1,500, with the away section priced at £2,000. That means an increase of a whopping 4687.5 per cent in the cost of a standard adult ticket in the home ends as first purchased to when re-sold online.

On their website, FootballTicketNet say that they are “a marketplace who specialises in sold out and hard to get football tickets” and maintain that they are “not connected, not working with and not affiliated with by anyway to any official organiser, team, venue, or box office.”

Their website continues: “Most of our tickets are sold above face value, these prices are determined according to the demand and difficulty getting them which means that the price you will see on your ticket will not be similar to our price for the reasons mentioned before.”

FootballTicketNet also recommends that before buying tickets on its site, to try and purchase tickets directly from the official organisers but adds that if no tickets are available or tickets are hard to source, then they are the “optimal source” for purchasing tickets.  FootballTicketsNet have been contacted for a comment. 

A spokesperson for the Sunderland fan group Red and White Army (RAWA) said: "RAWA are of course against touts looking to exploit the demand from supporters to attend the derby match. Ticket prices are high enough without the added premium in a secondary market."

Sunderland’s terms and conditions state that if season tickets are resold or transferred without the prior written consent of the club, it will become void and the holder will be refused entry to or ejected from the ground for that match or any subsequent matches.

The resale of football tickets in England is illegal under anti-hooliganism laws unless they are sold through the club’s authorised service. This service is often provided through an official partner. FootballTicketNet are not an official partner of Sunderland’s.

Indeed, Section 166 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 makes it an offence to tout tickets for football matches and Section 53 of Violent Crime Reduction A 2006 includes trading on the internet within the definition of ticket touting. An offence would only arise, however, if any part of the transaction occurs within England and Wales as that is the limit of the Act’s territory.