Come on, a little glue (lolilol) to start these holidays as it should be: how to applaud PSG on match nights when you have left an arm upstream to buy a ticket because you are not a subscriber? From the height of her twenty springs, Lucie, this young PSG supporter, has not found the answer. This is why she launched a protest movement on Twitter with the hashtag #Ticketplaceout. “I’m happy that my message was relayed, it shows that many of us think that there is a problem with ticket prices at the Parc des Princes,” she told us.
Ticketplace, what is Jamy? It’s very simple, it’s the official ticket resale platform for Parc des Princes subscribers who can’t or don’t want to go to the stadium on a match night. The problem is that on this platform, prices literally skyrocket since resellers are free to set the price of their ticket themselves. Thus, for Tuesday evening’s match against Maccabi Haifa – which remains the least sexy poster of group H – it is not possible to find a ticket for less than 88.50 euros (75 euros for the ticket to which s add 13.50 euros for booking fees).
To avoid having to fill up with gas to see Neymar, Mbappé, Messi and the others frolicking on the lawn, non-subscriber supporters can however try to buy their ticket directly at the club, via the classic ticket office. The problem is that with a 48,000-seat stadium 75% occupied by subscribers, the number of tickets available at relatively affordable prices (around 40 euros in Auteuil or Boulogne) is limited. By taking out a MyParis subscription, Lucie has priority in accessing this primary market, although she has never managed to obtain one. “The time to receive the notification on his mailbox and to connect to the PSG site, there is nothing more available. And behind you find yourself having to drop 100, 150, 200 on Ticketplace. It’s freaking me out…”
Ticketplace, “QSI’s golden egg hen”
“It is almost impossible to find a place via this primary ticket office since there is a priority of purchase, the day of the opening of the ticket office, for companies and hospitality, engages Pierre *, this subscriber and member of the Block Parisii, this small group of supporters who have been populating the Boulogne stand for a few years. This means that once a lambda supporter looks for one in this way, there are no more for sale. People therefore have no choice but to turn to Ticketplace, and there we enter the supernatural. “What bothers me, continues Lucie, is that these are rates charged in popular stands. If it was in the Paris grandstand, I don’t say, but there in Auteuil or Boulogne, it’s just shameful. Suddenly there are a lot of supporters who cannot come to see a single match in the season. »
85 euros for Haifa? It’s ugly what I’m going to say, but given what we usually see on Ticketplace, it’s not even excessive, blows Pierre. The reality is that we can no longer come to the Park to support our team if we do not have a season ticket. To go see a PSG-Angers it takes at least 70 euros. Who can afford that today? If you come with your child, and plan to go to the store to buy something for the kid, a drink and a sandwich, it’s 200, 300 or even 400 euros for a meeting for two. »
Because if the tickets sold individually are already not given, the places side by side, they are sold at gold prices. For Haifa, in Auteuil, you will have to drop 220 euros to come accompanied. This summer, the Block Parisii rose up against Ticketplace, denouncing through a press release “the goose that lays the golden eggs of QSI”, this “fourth dimension” where prices are totally above ground. They also denounce the fact that PSG uses both the seller – who is punctured by part of his profit – and the buyer. On arrival, in fact, the club receives around 30% of the resale via Ticketplace.
If this financial windfall is absolutely not negligible, especially after the Covid, the stadiums behind closed doors and the club’s deficit estimated at around 350 million for the 2021-2022 financial year according to our colleagues from Parisian, PSG assures us that this is not their main source of motivation. It would first be a question of actually filling the stadium because, after multiple marketing studies, he realized that a subscriber could leave his seat empty up to 10 times per season. “I can quote you full PSG-Angers on paper, all the tickets had found takers in subscription and on sale individually, but in real life in the stadium, there were 28,000 spectators…, slips us an intimate of the club . On a stadium of 48,000, it’s a real problem. »
Guarantee a full stadium and cut short the black market
Second argument put forward by Paris Saint-Germain, the fight against the black market. As PSG has grown enormously over the past ten years, the parallel market has exploded and generated enormous frustration for fans who bought tickets on external platforms that had been sold several times and where only the first to pass through the gates could enter. Stadium. This is also why, after trying to limit the resale price on Ticketplace for a season, he reconsidered his decision.
On the side of the club, we are assured that if we limit the selling price to 50 euros for a large poster in the Boulogne stand, the resellers will abandon Ticketplace to turn to the black market, with the risks that this entails for the buyer. The big European clubs having tried it would regularly experience it bitterly. “Hence this approach of saying to yourself: yes, the prices are a little high, but if it is not done at home in complete safety, it will be done elsewhere and if it is done elsewhere, safety no longer exists and we come back with people who are robbed, disappointed and who will blame the whole world and the club first, ”we are told in the club’s entourage.
On this point, Lucie agrees. “That’s the advantage of Ticketplace, it’s that it’s secure, but I don’t know if that justifies letting resellers make such margins, we have to try to regulate this system to a minimum, at least in turns . For Pierre, this is the price to pay so that the Parc des Princes remains, at least in certain places, a place accessible to the most modest budgets. “I don’t spit on what has become of the club,” he said. Of course the money has to come into the coffers, but we should not forget that football is supposed to be a popular sport and accessible to all, and it takes everything to make stands. I think there is another better compromise to be found. For its part, PSG admits that the ideal solution does not exist and ensures that it tries to find compromises that best suit everyone.
The CUP wants to end this system in Auteuil
This is what he did this season in the Virage Auteuil with the members of Collectif Ultras Paris. After discussion with the leaders of the group, the PSG has acted on the idea that the ultras would now be prohibited from reselling their ticket on the Ticketplace platform. “PSG is aware of the problem and I think that’s why they were attentive to our request and are supporting us on this test. Football is still a popular sport. Everyone should be able to go see a match at the Parc des Princes. And we will always fight so that all the inhabitants of Île-de-France can see PSG matches, ”explained the president of the CUP, Romain Mabille, with our colleagues from France Blue Paris.
“It’s good that the ultras, who are in contact with the club, take this subject seriously and make it possible to move things forward. We will say that it is a good start, but it is not yet enough, judge Lucie. We must continue on this path. The management must realize the problem and act accordingly, if only by limiting resale prices in all corners”. Pierre, for his part, offers another idea: “To prevent clever little guys from continuing their lucrative business, they must be required to come to a certain number of matches per season under penalty of termination of their subscription. “There may be a track to dig for PSG.
*The name has been changed