Fans of the National Football League (NFL) snapped up tickets in mere minutes for the first regular season game to be played in Germany, at Munich’s Allianz Arena in November.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are set to meet the Seattle Seahawks on November 13, with fans rushing to purchase tickets from Ticketmaster.
It had been reported that 1.5 million people registered interest in buying tickets for the game, but only about 50,000 tickets were available. Tickets went on sale yesterday (Tuesday).
However, there are questions over security when it came to preventing ticket touts from securing tickets to the game. There was a long virtual queue seconds after the sale began and tickets were snapped up in minutes, before appearing on resale sites soon after.
Tickets are already available through resale platform Viagogo, with the lowest price for a single ticket costing £572 ($685/€672) at the time of writing.
NFL fans have taken to social media to complain about the length of the queue, high resale prices and missing out because of ticket scalpers.
One social media user wrote: “I’ve seen resale before, but not like this, real fans are missing out because of scalpers @Ticketmaster, @NFL, #NFLGermany. Surely something can be done about this. A queue of 750,000 at the second the queue became available is ridiculous.”
Sports radio station Talksport’s Will Gavin also commented on Twitter: “Ticketmaster’s handling of these sales is a joke. Many resale tickets are back on Ticketmaster, making them more money in fees etc, so they [have] no incentive to fix the problem.
“Add to that, NFL have a partnership with them, and the fans are the ones screwed time and time again.”
The NFL announced that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would face the Seattle Seahawks in Germany in May, after it was revealed in February that Munich’s Allianz Arena would be the venue.
The NFL will play five international games this year – three in the UK, one in Germany and one in Mexico.
Frankfurt’s Deutsche Bank Park will also hold NFL games in the future.
Share this