NSW Fair Trading investigates Canberra United sponsorship-for-tickets scheme

NSW Fair Trading is probing concerns that A-League Women’s club Canberra United may have breached the state’s anti-ticket scalping laws by offering access to tickets for the Matildas’ sold-out FIFA World Cup semi-final in exchange for sponsorship.

With all tickets to Wednesday’s game against England at Stadium Australia (Accor Stadium) sold out, Canberra United posted on social media on Monday that businesses who committed to sponsoring the football club for the upcoming 2023/24 season could “gain access” to tickets for the semi-final, with offers starting from $2500 plus GST.

Standard ticket prices for the game range from $30 to $1100.

However, Fair Trading is looking into whether the offer breaches NSW laws introduced in 2018 that make it an offence to resell a ticket to an event for more than 10% of the original price plus transaction costs.

As of today, the post had been removed.

As a member of the ‘football family’ Canberra United would have received an allocation of tickets for the games.

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, NSW Better Regulation and Fair Trading Minister Anoulack Chanthivong said any endeavours to exploit the Matildas’ historic success were “pretty low”.

Minister Chanthivong later added that he was pleased the post had been removed, but had asked Fair Trading to write to Canberra United to “let them know their obligations when reselling tickets for events in NSW”, commenting “the Matildas have delivered an incredible moment of national pride, you’d have to be pretty low to take advantage … Fair Trading has ramped up proactive monitoring of online platforms to catch out those ripping people off.

“At face value this doesn’t look acceptable, but Fair Trading will need to look into the specifics.”

Canberra United’s posts on Facebook and Twitter had advised “if your business commits to sponsoring Canberra United for the 2023/2024 Liberty A-League season by 2pm tomorrow, Tuesday 15 August, you can gain access to tickets for the sold-out Australia v England FIFA Women’s World Cup Semi-Final in Sydney this Wednesday.”

Slavich had told The Canberra Times on Tuesday: “Reach out, we have tickets available which people cannot access any other way.”

Ticket Scams
National interest around Wednesday’s match has led the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe to warn of scams ahead of the game.

In a statement she advised “understandably, Australians are inspired by the phenomenal success of the Matildas, but fans should be very careful when last-minute ticket shopping for hugely popular events such as the World Cup finals.

“We are already seeing initial reports of scam activity, particularly on Facebook, where scammers are responding to posts from people looking for tickets and using compromised accounts to sell non-existent tickets.”