Hong Kong football boss says ‘not our job’ to prevent scalping, tells fans to watch on TV
Charles Cheung says game against Singapore sold out because ‘our matches are popular’, adds there are no measures to stop ticket reselling
Local football boss Charles Cheung Yim-yau said it was “not our responsibility” to police ticket sales, after a backlash from fans over the speed at which Hong Kong’s critical Asian Cup qualifier against Singapore next week sold out.
The Football Association of Hong Kong, China (HKFA) announced that all tickets had been snapped up for Tuesday’s fixture at the 50,000-capacity Kai Tak Stadium just 77 minutes after releasing them via online platform Ticketflap last Friday.
Tickets priced up to 17 times their face value swiftly reappeared on resale sites, prompting supporters to question why a real-name registration process employed for October’s 1-1 draw with Bangladesh had been ditched.
Cheung, the association’s general secretary, said that after “cautious consideration”, his organisation had decided real-name registration risked “creating other big issues”, but acknowledged there were no measures in place to stop unscrupulous people from buying tickets, before moving them on at inflated prices.
He said real-name registration was adopted for the Bangladesh game only because buyers were also entered into a lucky draw to win a car.
“Everyone misunderstood [our sales method] because we used it last time, but our usual practice is to let people buy tickets freely; we didn’t change any policy,” said Cheung, who added that the speed at which the clash had sold out meant “our matches are very popular”.