The Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) has cancelled around 100 tickets for Saturday’s highly anticipated Six Nations game against England amid concerns a hospitality company run by former England international Victor Ubogu has breached the terms of a High Court injunction preventing it from marketing tickets.
Wales and England meet at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff with the usual strong demand for the fixture heightened by the fact that the two teams are the only unbeaten sides heading into the third round of Six Nations games.
Saturday’s match is a sell out, but the WRU claims VU Limited has been working in association with an unnamed Welsh rugby club with a view to selling tickets to the company’s customers. VU is currently advertising a hospitality package in which fans can join Ubogu and fellow former England international Lee Mears, along with former Wales star Colin Charvis, on a day return trip from London to Cardiff on an exclusively chartered luxury train.
The package is priced at £799 (€921/$1,045), but its terms state that it doesn’t include a match ticket. The listing states: “VU is not authorised to supply or procure match tickets.”
However, the WRU maintains VU has broken a High Court injunction taken out last year, adding that it had also breached “relevant ticket terms and conditions”. In a statement, the WRU said: “The Welsh Rugby Union has cancelled approximately 100 tickets for Wales’ Guinness Six Nations meeting with England at Principality Stadium… after discovering the terms of a 2018 High Court injunction against VU Limited, an unofficial provider of hospitality packages owned and run by the former England rugby international Victor Ubogu, and the relevant WRU ticket terms and conditions had been infringed.
“The WRU learnt that these tickets were obtained from a Welsh rugby club, which has been collaborating with VU Limited in order to sell tickets to VU Limited hospitality customers, who have paid for a match-day hospitality package which includes return train travel from London to Cardiff.”
WRU official offsite hospitality operator Events International is the only officially sanctioned ticket source for off-site hospitality packages. Onsite hospitality at Principality Stadium is offered directly by the WRU itself.
The WRU’s official travel partner, Gullivers Sports Travel, is the only company able to offer travel packages which include match tickets. The Union added that it is against its ticket terms and conditions to re-sell tickets above face value anywhere else other than via its officially licensed secondary market website, Seatwave.
The WRU said: “The governing body of Wales’ national sport reserves the right to protect its commercial interests and to enforce its ticket terms and conditions through all options available to it in order to enable all proceeds from the professional game to be retained and invested back into Welsh rugby.
“It has also previously obtained High Court injunctions against two other companies in 2017, Trihorn Enterprizes and Evental Ltd (in the latter case, approximately 200 tickets for Wales’ Six Nations meeting with Ireland were cancelled for the same reasons), and strongly advises all fans to ensure they only buy tickets from official sources.”
Image: Visit Cardiff
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