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UEFA shambles - £800 worth of tickets refunded and NO games in ballot.

Absolutely devastated at the news today.

Applied with a friend - me (16 active CAPS, him (11 active CAPS). Allocated every single England game recently refunded £800 give or take each.

Into the ballot and every game unsuccessful except;

We applied together and I’ve been given a Croatia ticket category 2 and he hasn’t. I’m clearly not in the top 70% of cappers, but they’ve allocated me a Croatia ticket and not the other two. He has been UNSUCCESSFUL in ALL group games. How have they decided I’m eligible for a Croatia ticket, but not Scotland or Czech.

Applied together, been screwed together. We are both bitterly disappointed. I’d rather have both of us been unsuccessful than me obtaining ONE out of the possible SIX tickets between us both.

None of it makes any sense and tbh I don’t really want to go to a game on my own. It just defeats the object of going with friends / family and having that special atmosphere.

Can anyone please explain to me ( top top cappers, with a lot of experience of following England for donkeys years) how I have somehow been accepted to one game and not the others?? This ballot seems to be drawn as random as it gets and it’s wholly upsetting after all the summer we have looked forward to for the best part of two years now.

Deflated.

58 Replies

  • Stephen Holmes

    In reply to Matthew Isle:

    Agreed Matt...people take following England to different levels...On the lower levels some will go if its organised for them....all the way through to as you say people sacrificing jobs and relationships...IOne person I know of sold their house to go to Mexico in 86,because it was the only way they could afford to go.
  • Graham Morrison

    In reply to Stephen Holmes:

    It always a personal option on how you use your holidays ? Those who use them to follow England abroad deserve more caps and more rewards than they are currently getting .
    Those who like me didn’t / don’t get paid when not working and still follow England away and have to find time and money for family holidays trust me it is not easy .
    But like Matt , Mr Holmes and others have said
    Make the sacrifice you’ll get the reward .
  • Peter John-Baptiste

    In reply to Roger Loughney:

    You seem to think 'Wembley Stadium Limited' has something to do with you not getting tickets?

    It really doesn't
  • Chris Power

    In reply to David Lilley:

    Makes you wish we never get given a tournament to host ever again :D
  • Roger Loughney

    In reply to Matthew Isle:

    Thanks for your good wishes. I only ever post material that I am happy for anyone to see, even my mug shot, so my posts being "attributable", me being "accountable" is great; I think that makes for better discussions, even if they sometimes get very candid and heated!
    UEFA evidently sold about 1.5 million tickets to the public across Europe about two years ago. Perhaps the circumstances of many of those buyers will have changed, and UEFA may have had many returned. If those are released for sale again, I look forward to the scramble when I bid for a few for myself.
  • Roger Loughney

    In reply to Peter John-Baptiste:

    I disagree. I have every confidence that the Directors of that organisation, one of the organisations in the bizarre network of legal entities that form the complex structure of the English FA, sat down a week or so ago and decided unanimously to screw me over in the ballot.
  • David Lilley

    In reply to Roger Loughney:

    Hi, Roger. Please take this post as a positive attempt to help you to understand the issues.

    With the massive reduction in crowd sizes which have been imposed by all of the governments in the host countries, the 1.5 million tickets sold to non-registered fans in the summer 2019 ballots will also be subject to a massive cancellation and refund process. We do not know for certain that the tickets for Wembley are subject to the same 75% reduction as the official FA allocation distributed through the ESTC but this is a fair assumption. It won't be far off. All fans had a chance to return unwanted tickets for a refund earlier this year. Those who got their tickets through the general public sale and neither returned them for a refund nor had them cancelled by UEFA will not get another chance to return them for a refund. There will not be any "returns" from this tranche of tickets which could be made available to ESTC members.

    Note that the UEFA ballots are not being handled in the same way as the ESTC ballots. UEFA are conducting random ballots and cancelling / refunding the unlucky fans. Those fans who are successful in the UEFA ballots will keep their tickets and not be refunded even if they no longer want the tickets.

    There may be more tickets available to England fans in the future if
    - ESTC members who were lucky in the ballots do not take up their tickets,
    - fans of our opponents do not take up their full allocations, e.g. because of travel restrictions,
    - the allocations for corporate clients and the "football family" are not fully taken up.

    Regarding your lack of success in the ballots, the conspiracy theory described above does not do you credit. The allocation of the reduced number of tickets was carried out using the 70% / 20% / 10% rule which is set out in the Travel Club rules. This is the same rule which applies at every tournament where there are insufficient tickets to satisfy demand. You do not have enough caps (at the end of the 2018-20 campaign) to qualify for the 70% of tickets set aside for the highest capped applicants. You have not been to any away friendlies or qualifiers so you don't qualify for the 20% ballot. That means you were in the 10% ballot. For ease of arithmetic, let's assume that we originally had 12000 tickets and we now have only 3000. The new ballots are being restricted to those members who were successful in the original ballots.

    Tickets available in the 10% ballot = 3000 x 10% = 300
    Number of members wanting tickets = 12000 i.e. the number who originally had tickets
    Number of members successful in the 70% and 20% = 3000 x 90% = 2700
    Number of members in the 10% ballot = 12000 - 2700 = 9300
    Probability of success in the 10% ballot = 300 / 9300 = 3.2%

    So, the odds of you getting a ticket from the reduced allocation were very much stacked against you. The idea that suits at the FA conspired against you in the ballots is pure fiction.

  • Roger Loughney

    In reply to David Lilley:

    Thanks. I understand the maths. With respect to "Those fans who are successful in the UEFA ballots will keep their tickets and not be refunded even if they no longer want the tickets." - will there be any process put in place for those particular tickets to become available to people still wishing to attend, as far as you know?
  • James Collinson

    In reply to Roger Loughney:

    The problem with UEFAs system of enforcing ticket purchases is that those tickets are essentially to all intents and purposes sold and allocated so they will not be going back into any sale there will just be an empty seat come the day. However, they have had numerous windows for any fans no longer interested in attending to return tickets so I’m guessing the thinking is anyone who remains will still want those tickets if they were successful in the ballot. Any cancelled tickets would I assume allow a slight increase in success from the ballots rather than being made available elsewhere. However there is a good chance that opposing authorities (less so the Scots) may not take up their full allocation due to travel restrictions so these would no doubt end up being given to ESTC to ballot off using the 70/20/10 system. There’s also the slight chance that allocations may be increased for later group games and I would imagine the same would apply but nothing is set in stone. There will also be people not prepared to go alone/ able to afford the tickets we have allocated from our ballots so they will also be reballoted too.
  • David Lilley

    In reply to Roger Loughney:

    Everything I've seen from UEFA so far suggests they are playing hard ball. The general rule for tickets to UEFA competitions is that they are non-refundable under any circumstances other than force majeure. This is in their published ticketing policy. Following the coronavirus outbreak, UEFA included a new force majeure clause to define what happens when matches are cancelled. moved, etc because of the current crisis. They also opened a window of opportunity to allow fans to surrender their tickets for a refund because of the risk of lockdowns, travel restrictions, etc. This is something UEFA have never done before for any previous tournament. But they made it clear when the last window was opened for tickets to be surrendered and refunded that this would be the final opportunity. So, if someone has been lucky and kept their ticket in the current UEFA general public ballot and they subsequently can't attend the match then it's tough. The ticket is not refunded and recycled even though there may be other fans who would gladly take the ticket.

    As this situation is unprecedented, we can't exclude the possibility that UEFA might relent. But the above is the situation at the moment.
  • Roger Loughney

    In reply to James Collinson:

    Fair enough - thank you.
  • Roger Loughney

    In reply to David Lilley:

    Thank you. I do now recall that amendment being carefully advised to us in an e mail some months ago.
  • Peter salnicki

    In reply to David Lilley:

    Its a big shame that Uefa dont operate a ticket reselling poral , that I believe they have done before. So if somebody wants to sell their ticket (face value) , they can put it up for sale, but they only get the money if somebody buys it. So it costs nothing to Uefa , but helps out fans. Too easy I guess....
  • David Lilley

    In reply to Peter salnicki:

    They did have a ticket resale portal in March 2020, before the pandemic, but it was only scheduled to last 3 weeks. I can understand some reluctance to allow resales close to the tournament where paper tickets are being used as there are issues regarding the physical return of existing tickets from the current holders, the manual logging of the ticket return and the delivery of the reissued tickets to the new purchasers. But, where mobile phone tickets are being used, the return and reissue can be almost instantaneous and just requires simple software additions. There seems no reason why tickets can't be put on a resale platform right up to the morning of the match.
  • Simon Ostcliffe

    In reply to David Lilley:

    In the other major ticketing thread, I jokingly mentioned the UEFA hospitality packages, so I thought I'd email them.
    Our dedicated UEFA sales rep replied overnight.
    The cheapest package for all 8 Wembley matches is €4500 (£3800) Hear me out, before people start laughing.
    This guarantees all 3 of our group games, both round of 16 games, both semis and the final, subject to progression.
    That's an average of £475 per match. Now, I reckon a lot of us would pay that for any England semi or final ticket, if it came to the crunch. I know we did in Russia, on the street.
    What are people's thoughts on this? Availability is high (unsurprisingly) & the competition starts in just over 3 weeks.
    I'm discussing it with our group of regular tournament goers. Is it realistic or a bit ridiculous?
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