In a turbulent week for England 2015 after the resignation of CEO Debbie Jevans, the ticket resale process descended into chaos yesterday as it emerged that several hundred tickets to Rugby World Cup matches have been accidentally resold.
A technical glitch on the ticket website meant that some ticket IDs are now assigned to more than one owner, and the organising committee will be contacting those affected over the next few days.
A spokesman for England 2015 said, “The impact is not too severe, because we spotted the problem very early on in the resale process, and we’ll come up with a fair way of allocating tickets.” Thousands of people spent most of the day in the online queue, after the ticket sale was suspended once the glitch was spotted.
“I’m devastated,” one disgruntled fan told us. “I was so excited to be going to see Canada vs Romania in Leicester. Apparently the King Power Stadium is better than Welford Road, so it must be pretty special.”
England 2015 announced that details of a tie-breaking system, to decide if the tickets that have been sold twice would remain with the original owners or move to the new buyers, would be released in due course. A source at World Rugby refused to speculate about what format the tie-breaking would take.
“We’ve not made a final decision yet but there are a few options on the table. Drawing straws is one, but we want to make everything about the tournament different and memorable so we might decide on something more unusual, and create an opportunity out of this problem.
“Someone has suggested a cheering contest because we want our crowds to make a noise, or there could be a fandom test, because we want as many real fans in the grounds as possible.”
13 replies on “Rugby World Cup plunged into chaos as tickets are incorrectly resold”
I had that tab open all day yesterday at work and when I left the office I still wasn’t fully loaded and in. After applying for loads of tickets in the ballot and getting absolutely zero I’m starting to think it just isn’t meant to be this world cup for me! After going to France and New Zealand to watch the last two world cups, I’m seeing less of England on home soil that I did then!
I’ve luckily managed to buy a couple from friends that won tickets so I’m not completely empty handed – still been a pretty disappointing process so far though.
You completely had me until the quote about Leicester.
After hours of online queue I managed to get in around 8PM yesterday, I locked 3 tickets for Wales – Fidji and got kicked out from the website due to some technical issue. I managed to get back in around 11PM and the only available option was cat A tickets … 170 GBP per ticket … it is not just the availability but the prices are in my view way to expensive. A round of 16 tickets in the last world cup football in Brazil was cheaper than a NZ Georgia … I would be interested to know where all this money will go. It needs a lot of financial sacrifices to go there, there should be “cheap” tickets at least for the first round.
£170 to watch Wales v Fiji. Ha ha ha ha ha…. I felt bad about paying £50 for two tickets for that as it is a massive premium just because it is a RWC match, but £340 for a pair of tix to watch a game that was £20 for a pair only last Autumn? It’s a genius marketing job that RWC are doing.
A genius marketing job yes but this makes me sick to see that it is becoming even worst than football. I am the first one to defend rugby against football but that kind of business on such a big event is a shame. I doubt the cat A tickets were at 20GBP anyway, probably the C or D? And when I see the number of tickets which are already on the black market, you understand than more than 30% of tickets are sold to people who only want to make money of it … Nominative tickets should be a must, but who cares as rugby fans are all rich and well educated right? Really makes me sick
I was being sarcastic – I agree that it is ridiculous. My £20 comment was that last time Wales played Fiji in the MS you could get a pair of tix for £20. Now, just because it is a WC match, you pay £340 to watch the same teams play the same sport in the same stadium.
The Mill stadium doesn’t really have “poor” seats so the whole cat A/B/C/D is just more marketing spin.
I felt bad paying £50 for a pair of tix for a game I’ve never paid more than £30 for a pair before but my son wants to go the WC – hence my sarcastic jibe at it being “clever” marketing as they’ve managed to convince enough people that it’s worth multiple hundred percent markups to watch the same match just because it is now in a world cup.
As for getting the cheap tix – I got cheap tix in the ballot for every cheap Mill Stad game I applied for. I assumed I couldn’t be that lucky so assumed they were easy to get if you applied?
No offense taken at all, just a bit of frustration on my side after this process. I did not get the tickets through the ballots (which is entirely my fault) but I managed to secure my tickets at 70GBP (already quite expensive) … however during the payout process the entire site crashed and I had to queue again (that is why I thought it was not a 1st April joke as it could have happened). So I had to pay cat A for this game as i also promised someone to go there … hopefully I got other tickets as a more reasonable price but I still think overall they are overpriced. I ve been to the world cup in Brazil and it costs me 200USD for 3 first round match + 1 round of 16 …even if you plan it in advance it costs almost twice more for rugby … If I keep the rugby comparison, I am paying 80GBP for Cat B tickets for the ERC finale in Twickenham, it is not that cheap but still more “reasonable” than the price you pay for the WC. I am a rugby fan (as we are all) so I will pay the price to be there but it definitely has a bitter feeling now.
Check on viagogo the reselling prices on one of the official reselling portal … this is insane and when I see the number of tickets available and the margin applied I can’t understand why tickets are not nominative … this how it works in Roland Garros (Tennis tournament) and only few people are selling back their tickets as the process is really time consuming and heavy – but it is made on purpose to make sure real fans are buying them.
Hilarious !!!
Hang on a minute surely the people who brought the tickets first shouldn’t lose their tickets because the organisers accidently resold their tickets to a second person.
Why is there a draw being conducted surely its first come first served?
If i’ve lost any of my tickets im gonna be seriously pee’d off
Very worrying for about a millisecond. Ha ha!
Completely suckered me for a second there… Panic panic panic. To be honest I can totally imagine ‘the tie-breaking’ quote coming from a PR department ha
Ha ha, good one. Nearly had me you sick b’tards – nearly told my 13 year old hyper excited son that we might have to brace ourselves to the prospect of losing our tickets…
A good April Fool because it’s so believable
I will now be waiting for them to announce this very issue in a couple of weeks or so