Football ticket sites - any recommendations or ones to avoid?

[mambojambodothetango]

Looking to get tickets for a Liverpool home game in Feb or March for my son's birthday. Looks like Event Ticket Master has some at a good price but no idea if it's stupid to buy from a second hand site?? Direct from Liverpool there's only Hospitality tickets left. No experience of buying football tickets before, we're not members of anything and don't know anyone who has a season ticket. It's the men's team he wants to see.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I wouldn't buy off a resale site, that's asking for trouble. You would be better looking on Facebook for their fan spare tickets page, look for someone loaning out their season ticket.

Please only go to the club, or think of another birthday present. Consider an under 21 match or maybe a cup one instead of supporting what is criminal activity in all but name.

Yes you will possibly be disappointing him, however explaining if needed that you will not support resale sites or criminal activity is a lesson for life.

Seat Unique partner with a lot of Premier League clubs. Usually start at about £150 a ticket though, depending on fixture. Only thing to watch is that fixture dates and times can shift and you won’t get your money back if you can’t make it.

My understanding is that it is illegal to resell tickets for football matches in the uk, they can only be bought through the clubs, to maintain home and away segregation. Season ticket holders can return tickets to the club for resale. There are many instances of people being turned away from the ground with tickets that they have bought from resellers and you won't get your money back.

Have a look at these:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cr5z6pg2e6yo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c39rp81knypo

Giving money to touts is not helping anybody, and your son will be very disappointed at being refused admission.

It’s nigh on impossible to get tickets for the big premiership clubs - literally impossible

i got tickets for my myself and kids to a large championship side - I had to set up accounts for us all in advance and then note the date tickets would be released - usually 6 weeks in advance and had to sit refreshing screen every second to be one of the first to get in on the website and buy them - increasingly stressful- even being one of the first on the site there were only a handful of seats to choose from and usually just a solo seat dotted around - highly unlikely you’d get 2 together depending on his age and if he can go alone

You’ll never get tickets for a league game through the club; they’re all for season ticket holders.

Lots of clubs also have very strict rules on season ticket holders loaning their ticket (usual punishment is to lose their season ticket, so the consequences are huge).

You’d either need to pay for hospitality, or go to a reselling site but be prepared to pay way over the odds.

ETA - lots of clubs block the tickets that are listed on the reselling sites, so that’s also a risk you take.
Some clubs have schemes where STH can sell their seat back to the club (no idea if Liverpool do this), but you generally need to be registered with the club to take the spares.

You can get tickets but you need to sign up to membership which is an annual payment and then book tickets soon as they are released which is around a month in advance, hospitality sells ages in advance, I doubt this game has released general tickets yet. Maybe wait to get tickets for one of the less popular teams, but go through the official stadium and you will need the membership. I wouldn't trust resellers personally.

Ok wow, I'm glad I asked. The sites looked valid and had Trust Pilot reviews.

Thanks all for replying - really useful information.

To be clear, neither Seat Unique or Sportsbreaks are touts, they partner with various clubs to sell tickets at an inflated price. Outside of buying membership (which may be impossible at this point in the season) they’re probably your only option. We used Sportsbreaks last year to get Everton tickets as we are not local and DH wanted to go in the last Goodison season. We got a reasonable deal as we needed hotel anyway.

Get the tickets for the legends game, we always really enjoy our clubs ones.

Selling tickets at inflated prices fits my definition of touting perfectly. The clubs could just offer them to fans at the normal price. Why does a club that already has a ticket sale mechanism in place need to engage with a third party reseller?