Ashes tickets canned over scalping fears - Sports News - Fanatics - the world's biggest events

Ashes tickets canned over scalping fears

By John Salvado 21/06/2006 05:43:45 PM Comments (0)

Cricket Australia has cancelled 650 tickets for next summer's eagerly-awaited Ashes series because of scalping fears.

The first two days of the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne sold out within half an hour on Wednesday.

And increasing strong sales for days three and four have raised the prospect that the previous single-day Test attendance record of 90,800 could be broken on each of the first four days in Melbourne.

There are 8,000 tickets still on offer for day three in Melbourne and 19,000 for day four, with ground capacity at the refurbished MCG now approximately 95,000.

The opening four days at the other Tests in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide have already sold out.

"It really is an incredible response to what we would be looking forward to as not only a fantastic Boxing Day Test match but also (the) Test series sold out all around the country," said Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland.

"We're looking at not only breaking the record on day one, but day two and possibly later days."

After complaints that many of the tickets had been snapped up by scalpers, CA appointed a private investigation unit to investigate possible breaches.

"We have done a forensic review pre-distribution of tickets and found that something like 650 tickets are suspicious in nature and they've actually been cancelled," said Sutherland.

"That in itself is something that's disappointing, we'd hope not to be put in that position.

"But we've found through the audit, working through the agency, that there were a number of tickets where people have actually breached the conditions in the way they have purchased them."

Sutherland estimated the cancellations involved 50 or 60 people who had found a loophole to buy the maximum allocation of 10 tickets more than once.

Ebay has continued to refuse requests from CA to remove tickets for resale from the internet auction site.

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