WHAT A RIP OFF!
Rangers fans facing prices of £10,000 for Seville ticket
RANGERS fans are facing astronomical ticket prices for next week’s Europa League final in Seville — with some being flogged for almost £10,000.
The eye-watering sum was last night being quoted on a third-party ticketing website beyond the control of UEFA, Rangers or Eintracht Frankfurt.
Rangers booked their place for the European showpiece after last Thursday’s victory over RB Leipzig at Ibrox.
Now set to face Bundesliga side Frankfurt, both clubs have been allocated just 9,500 tickets despite the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan being able to house 40,000 supporters.
UEFA had allocated a further 13,000 for local fans and the general public, but it now seems that many of those have fallen into the hands of touts and are being sold on the black market.
Of the 9,500 tickets assigned to each club,
4,000 were to be set aside and distributed free of charge in a ballot as a way of saying thank you to fans for their support during the pandemic.
However, it is understood that even some of those complimentary tickets have now found their way into the wrong hands and are being sold for thousands of pounds online.
Prices start at £1,367 and go up to £3,420. But, with one ticket being advertised for £9,999, fans are being priced out.
One Rangers supporter told Sportsmail: ‘I always knew the ticket prices were going to be high. But some of the numbers being thrown around are just beyond a joke.
‘This is potentially a once-in-alifetime opportunity to go and watch your team in a European final. But, realistically, very few people can afford to pay thousands of pounds for a ticket. It’s ridiculous.
‘Me and a couple of friends have managed to get our travel sorted for Seville. That’s expensive enough in itself. It’s actually sickening to see how ticket touts exploit these situations.’
The original pricing structure as set out by UEFA started at 40 Euros in Category Four, ranging up to ¤100-150 in Category One.
The ticket being sold for £9,999 is a Category One, meaning that it is now being flogged for 100 times the price of the face value.
Meanwhile, Eintracht sporting director Markus Krosche reckons they will take at least double the amount of supporters to Seville than they took to their famous win in Barcelona.
The German club had 30,000 fans in the Nou Camp for their quarter-final win, with an estimated 20,000 more in the city of Barcelona.
He said: ‘Our fans are incredibly resourceful. They will find a way to get tickets. There will be at least double the number who were in Barcelona. We will have incredible support in Seville.
‘Rangers are a great team, but we won’t do anything differently in preparation for the final. Our coaching team are excellently prepared for every opponent.’