Cricket Australia has appealed for government legislation to outlaw excessive profiteering of sports tickets after massive mark-ups on tickets for the Ashes Test cricket series later this year.
Prices for sought-after Ashes tickets skyrocketed on online auction sites yesterday a day after thousands of furious Australian fans missed out despite being part of a so-called Australian Cricket Family (ACF) deal.
Successful buyers flooded the eBay website to sell their tickets at greatly inflated prices, with two tickets to the opening day of the fifth and final Sydney Test fetching one bid of 15,000 dollars (11,250 US) — compared to its face value of between 47 and 113 dollars (35 and 85 US).
CA failed in a request to have eBay remove any postings for Ashes tickets on its website, and has appealed for legislation to wipe out sports scalping.
“One of the things that we would be keen on is exploring a national approach, a national legislation that can be applied across all sports to ensure that this approach introduces legislation so that this sort of thing is illegal,” CA chief executive James Sutherland told a press conference in Melbourne yesterday.
Sutherland also indicated that CA may follow a move by the Australian Rugby Union, who have hired private investigators to identify and cancel Bledisloe Cup tickets obtained by scalpers for the Australia-New Zealand Test in Brisbane on July 29.
“We have people who have bought these tickets, not with the intent of going to the cricket but with a view of exploiting the public’s passion for cricket and I think that’s very disappointing,” he said.
“From CA point of view we are sorry and disappointed people have had those frustrations.

Posted: 06|3|06 at 7:25 am. Filed under: Auction News.