Tickets turn to Ashes

Good on Cricket Australia for trying to stop scalpers. I applaud their moves to stop scalpers from preventing ordinary cricket fans buying tickets to see the match, and I think it will stop scalpers getting such good mark-ups on their tickets in future.

But, I don’t applaud this: "CA will not disclose which seats have been targeted meaning that fans who obtained tickets on eBay will not know if theirs is valid until they arrive at the turnstiles." The Age.

So here’s the scenario, like many thousands of people you missed out on Ashes tickets (because the scalpers got in first) and so you had to resort to getting them on eBay. You are now going to punished three different ways,

1) you will have paid well over the ticket price to get in,
2) when you get to the ground you find you dont get to see the cricket at all,
3) you are publicly shamed when the little light goes red instead of green. Just because you wanted to go to the cricket.

If it is true that CA feels "It is very important to us that normal fans have access to tickets at the prices we set. Otherwise we are at risk of losing our connection to the people," Then they should allow those people who have bought the cancelled tickets the opportunity to present them before the game and to buy a new valid ticket at the gate price from CA. After all it is the normal fans that are forced to buy the tickets from scalpers in the first place.

And then they should impose a maximum number of tickets that can be purchased by one individual. Lets say 4 tickets per person. That will end professional scalping for good.