Here’s a scenario: There’s a big match that you desperately need to attend. It could be a season decider, or just an average game that lines up with your plans. Problem is it’s sold out, or you couldn’t snag a ticket with your team membership.
So now you’re thinking of browsing the secondary market. The idea of buying football resale tickets can be daunting: There’s always a lot of talk of scams and underhand practices, while teams try to discourage fans from buying re sale tickets.
The truth is that by following a few simple steps you can buy football resale tickets to almost any game you want to see, with perfect peace of mind. We’ll explain everything in one complete guide to secondary market tickets.
When You Might Need Football Resale Tickets
OK, so you’ve booked time off work and you’re using your precious few days to fly to the UK to experience the dream of watching an actual Premier League football match live for the first time. The problem is getting tickets, which are like gold dust.
You’ve even purchased a club membership to improve your chances, but of course that’s never a guarantee of being able to buy a ticket through the team’s official box office. Meanwhile, ticket exchanges, where fans transfer their tickets to other fans, always have patchy availability.
Primary Market Football Tickets are Hard to Score
Predictably, finding tickets hasn’t worked out. For some teams, members only less than a 10% of snagging tickets via the ballot system or first come, first serve sales.
At every club there’s a whole labyrinth to negotiate, from restrictions on when new members can buy tickets to priority windows, and some matches only being available to fans with a certain number loyalty points. None of these help out the average fan who needs to get to one match.
The match has now sold out, but obviously you can’t reschedule. This is when re sale tickets, or secondary market tickets become the only viable option.
The Problem with Buying Tickets on the Primary Market
Football tickets sell out fast, sometimes in a matter of minutes, and almost always before the tickets are made available to the public on something called ‘general sale’.
This is the term for a hypothetical final sales window when you can buy tickets without a membership. It almost never happens, and you should not plan for general sale if you want football tickets.
Members have a lot of purchasing privileges and will snap up the tickets long before any general sale window.
OK, so buying a club membership will guarantee you tickets, right? Wrong, members, especially at big clubs have a low probability of scoring tickets, especially for the biggest matches. Many teams publish data to prove it.
Take Arsenal Membership, if you want to see how tough it can be. These are the probabilities for an Arsenal Red Member, the only membership tier open to newcomers, to secure tickets in the sales ballot in the final few games of 2023-24:
| Opponent | Probability of Ballot Success for Red Members |
| Luton | 10% |
| Aston Villa | 10% |
| Bayern Munich | 13% |
| Chelsea | 10% |
| Bournemouth | 8% |
| Everton | 6% |
If you don’t want to contend with these odds, it’s time to start looking at secondary market tickets.
What Are Secondary Market Tickets?
In short, secondary market tickets are tickets to events that are resold online by the person who bought the ticket from the official box office. You can buy re sale tickets for all kinds of events, from concerts to comedy shows and any kind of sports event you can think of.
There are plenty of reasons why the original purchase will want to resell their tickets:
- A sudden change of schedule
- Unexpected cash-flow problems, and the need to recoup money
- Illness, which was especially prevalent when a positive Covid-19 test wiped out two weeks of your life
- Or maybe they just don’t feel up for it, and would rather pass their ticket to someone who will get more out of the event
Keep in mind that tickets for almost every event are non-refundable unless the event is cancelled and not rescheduled. This puts the original purchaser in a bind, and reselling their tickets is a solution that helps everyone.
Ticket Compare Conducts Independent Reviews of Secondary Marketplaces
We hold the resale ticket marketplaces that appear on Ticket Compare to a high standard. We have tested each of these websites ourselves, making an anonymous purchase and scrutinising every aspect of their experience, from usability to customer service and the match experience.
Each element is sized up in our step-by-step reviews. We even study vendor websites’ terms and conditions, in case there are any catches that people might overlook.
To make sure our service is as trustworthy as possible, we have tested and reviewed every major secondary marketplace in the industry. It’s simple: If these vendors don’t meet the criteria that we set as objective and independent reviewers, they won’t feature on our platform.
Our secondary marketplace review page is a handy resource if you’re new to ticket resale and want to get an idea of the websites you can rely on, and the ones that need a little caution.
The Price of Football Resale Tickets
As opposed to the primary market, which is buying the ticket from the organiser, secondary market tickets can fluctuate in a big way.
If there’s low demand, tickets will drop below face value (the original price). However, if the original tickets are underpriced or in short supply, and there’s a big demand, the price of secondary market tickets will exceed face value, often by a wide margin.
How to Buy Cheap Football Resale Tickets
You’re in a better position if you don’t mind what game you buy re sale tickets for. The laws of supply and demand dictate the price of seats. So unfortunately it’s natural that you may have to pay extra for the privilege of watching the biggest matches.
Still, there are a few things you can do to pay less for tickets from resellers:
Consider Less Popular Opponents
You can expect to pay a premium for Manchester United vs Liverpool tickets, but if you don’t mind the opponent, you can pay less by watching your team play a less glamorous side further down the table.
Be Flexible about the Time
It’s just a fact that secondary market tickets for midweek evening games are cheaper than for England’s traditional 3:00 PM kick-offs. There are lots of reasons why these fixtures are less in demand, from work priorities to transport issues. They can all work in your favour if you’re trying to buy cheap football resale tickets.
Consider Going Alone
With most secondary market ticket sites you will have to pay through the nose for the privilege of sitting in a group. It’s also worth remembering that many of the seats will be lone season ticket holders reselling their spot. There are plenty of advantages to buying single re sale tickets, and price is one.
Compromise on Your Ticket Location
If the most important consideration for you is simply attending an event, you may be willing to compromise on where you sit or stand. At football stadiums, the cheaper sections are on the shortside ends of the stadium, behind the goals, while the seats nearer the halfway line have the best views and are typically pricier.
Buying Premium Football Resale Tickets
Many people attending events from overseas will be happy to make the day extra special, and splash out on a hospitality package. These tickets will involve special padded seats, access to VIP amenities, complimentary drinks, and appearance from famous former players.
Hospitality tickets are not considered General Admission, and are not sold through the organiser’s box office as these customers have very different requirements.
For example, Premier League football clubs have a lineup of highly specialised official resellers, ensuring that all of these premium matchday hospitality packages are snapped up.
Comparing Secondary Market Tickets
The great thing about Ticket Compare is you can browse tickets across several platforms. With our comparison tool we scour the best secondary marketplaces for tickets for a host of events, from concerts to MMA and football across Europe.
As we’ve shown, these marketplaces are reviewed and pre-vetted, so you can make an informed purchase and snag tickets that are otherwise unavailable.
Is it Safe to Buy Secondary Market Tickets?
Yes, it’s perfectly safe to buy football resale tickets if you use the main platforms listed on Ticket Compare. We test and review the secondary marketplaces for extra peace of mind.
One of the key differences between ticket touting and ticket brokering is legitimacy. Ticket brokers adhere to business practices, and seek to protect both sellers and buyers with secure payment, terms and conditions and guarantees about the authenticity of the tickets available on their platforms. They stake their reputation on everything going to plan.
They also encourage customers to review these sites online, via reliable communities like Trustpilot. For all sites, there are hundreds or thousands of reviews by fans whose resale experience went without a hitch.
On the flipside, be wary of ticket resellers using informal channels, as they may be taking advantage of the lack of regulation to rip you off, or simply not send the tickets you purchased. To counter this, the best resale ticket sites require a proof of billing address to cut down on fraudulent activity.
Receiving Secondary Market Tickets
The part that causes the most trepidation for people buying football resale tickets is the period between making the purchase and receiving the tickets. The good news is that if you use trusted secondary marketplaces there’s a high level of communication, telling you exactly what you need to do and what to expect.
These days most re sale tickets for football matches and other events are e-tickets that you download to your phone via an app. The deadlines are always rather narrow, and it’s totally normal to receive a ticket within 24 hours of the event.
Occasionally you may need to print the tickets out, or receive paper tickets to get into the stadium. For this you may need to provide an address for delivery, which will take some coordination if you’re travelling from abroad.
As a rule, paper tickets are dispatched a little earlier, by courier or first-class post, than mobile e-tickets or pdf tickets. Remember, it’s in the sellers’ interests to send tickets as soon as they possibly can.
Don’t Be Afraid to Get in Touch
It’s just a fact that many football resale tickets will not become available to the seller until 24 hours before a match. No doubt this may cause some anxiety for the buyer, wondering whether they will receive their tickets in time, and when they do, how to use the tickets to enter the stadium.
This is why ticket resale sites invest so heavily in customer service. From our experience, all of the companies on our platform are highly contactable. Typically, you get:
- Reachable email and WhatsApp accounts
- Swift response times
- Helpful agents explaining every step of the process
Buying Secondary Market Tickets with Ticket Compare
Ticket Compare puts in all the legwork, checking availability on re sale tickets from only the best-performing marketplaces. You can seek out the price and location that are right for you, and make your purchase with total peace of mind.
There’s always high availability for Premier League tickets, for leagues across Europe, and for a wide range of other events, from concerts to Wimbledon to Formula 1.
