ECB to appeal for clampdown on ticket touting

The ECB is to call for the government to impose new laws which will clamp down on ticket touting after tickets for the forthcoming Ashes have been made available on the eBay auction website at inflated prices. Ticket touts are believed to have made multiple applications for tickets which were originally made obtainable through a lottery system.

"Hundreds of thousands of England cricket fans have been unable to obtain tickets this year," an ECB spokesperson told The Sunday Telegraph. "They must find it disturbing to see seats sold for such inflated prices on the internet and outside the ground." Such is the scarcity of availability at Lord's - where more than 130,000 applications have been made for a venue which accommodates 30,000 - that seats with a face value of £102 have received bids of £700 on eBay.

With the exception of football matches, ticket touting is not actually illegal in England, although selling tickets above face value contravenes the terms and conditions of sale, as pointed out in the small-print on an Ashes ticket for the Lord's Test. It reads: "Any person selling tickets for an amount of money above the value printed on the ticket is going so without the Club's permission. Some tickets offered for sale in this manner are stolen. The Metropolitan Police will interview and remove from the ground the purchasers or holders of such tickets."

Anyone caught selling on tickets for football matches can face a fine of up to £5000. The ban on football touts is part of wider anti-hooliganism legislation; there is no specific mention about ripping people off.

But now the ECB is joining forces with three other sporting bodies - including the Football Association - to try to make touting illegal. The informal group, known as `Four Sports', comprises the ECB, the Rugby Football Union, the Lawn Tennis Association and the FA. They want an existing ten-year law - which makes selling on football tickets illegal - to be extended to include other sports such as rugby, tennis and cricket.