Chelsea owner Todd Boehly ‘director’ of website selling ‘unauthorised’ Premier League tickets

Jason Soutar
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly at Stamford Bridge
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly at Stamford Bridge

Chelsea owner Todd Boehly co-owns a website involved in “unauthorised” selling of tickets to Premier League matches, according to a report.

The Blues have frequently condemned the resale of tickets, which became a criminal offence in the United Kingdom after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

Chelsea said on their website last year: “Chelsea FC is committed to tackling ticket touting, for both home and away matches.

“We identify individuals who fraudulently harvest tickets/memberships to sell at vastly inflated prices, investigate both online and offline illegal ticket sales, and use a range of tactics and enforcement measures that help to combat ticket touting.”

As per a report from Telegraph Sport, Blues owner Boehly could potentially be involved in something that would completely contradict that statement.

It is claimed that Vivid Seats, a US-based website co-owned by Boehly, is partaking in the “unauthorised” resale of tickets to Premier League matches – including Chelsea – to foreign tourists.

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People in the UK cannot buy or sell tickets as the ‘practice would be illegal’.

Boehly is ‘both an investor and director’ of the website which ‘charges 10 per cent commission and a service fee reported to run from 20 to 40 per cent of the original ticket price’.

That does indeed create the possibility that the American billionaire is ‘profiting from a practice his own club has repeatedly denounced’.

Furthermore, Vivid Seats is on the Premier League’s list of “unauthorised ticketing websites”. Their website states that any “event must take place in the United States” and “you must reside in the United States”, though ‘it refused to answer questions as to how it was listing Premier League matches’.

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There is a great risk involved for buyers on ticketing websites as fans could easily be ‘denied entry to a game or be duped by counterfeiters’, with the Premier League website urging fans to “exercise extreme caution”.

Boehly’s involvement has unsurprisingly angered Chelsea supporters. One told the Telegraph: “The fact that our owner could be benefiting personally at the expense of loyal supporters is hypocritical at best and downright dishonest at worst.

“Touting is a huge issue at Chelsea at the moment and it’s getting worse. There are fewer and fewer tickets available for supporters on a general admission, match-by-match basis.”

Vivid Seats is somehow advertising tickets for the remaining matches this season of every Premier League side.

One example is Liverpool’s last game of the season at home to Crystal Palace – when they could lift the Premier League trophy in front of their fans for the first time – having tickets priced ‘between £1,622 and £17,672’.

This has raised questions about the law against the resale of football tickets.

The Vivid Seats website also states: “Vivid Seats is a legitimate and reliable ticket marketplace for EPL tickets.

“Vivid Seats is accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) with an A+ rating, has over a million 5-star reviews on ShopperApproved, a 4.1-star rating on Trustpilot, and a 4.7-star rating on the Apple Store app. We have a Buyer Guarantee that is designed to provide full peace of mind, safety, and security for our valued customers.”

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There have been requests for Boehly to comment, which has prompted a statement from the company.

It read: “As a global business, we are always respectful and cognisant of local regulatory policies and procedures that are in place in any market to ensure we are compliant.

“As such, our policy restricts the sale of EPL tickets from UK sellers. We can confirm that we do not have any UK sellers listing EPL inventory on our marketplace. Additionally, Vivid Seats does not and has never directly marketed or advertised Premier League tickets to UK customers.

“Vivid Seats and Chelsea have a longstanding and respectful partnership, which was publicly announced in 2023, where we partnered with Chelsea on their first-ever Premier League pre-season tournament in the USA.

“Regarding pricing, Vivid Seats does not set the base price for tickets sold on its marketplace or receive any revenue from that base price; only the seller sets and receives the base ticket price.”

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