about the large group of young Japanese people who somehow
managed to get tickets for the game at Southampton earlier
this month, so here goes:
“This is what our inquiries have discovered. The group were
employees of a Japanese cosmetics company who had been given
the trip and the tickets as reward for their hard work in
the previous year. The visit was organised by a well-known
Japanese travel agency, which is itself a subsidiary of a
Japanese airline. The agency will not tell us where they got
the tickets from, which is unsurprising if frustrating. The
UK-based handling agency which looked after the group when
they were here will not tell us either. Or at least, they
profess not to know.
“The tickets were not acquired as part of a sponsorship deal
with a Manchester United player, as I believe some of the
Japanese visitors had suggested. No such deal would ever be
agreed by the club or a player.
“Some United fans did provide us with the seat numbers
occupied by many of the Japanese group. However, due to the
fact that many fans at Southampton chose not to occupy their
designated seats, we could not properly track down the
source of the tickets. We know this because we traced the
seat numbers to tickets we had sold and approached some of
the season ticket holders and asked them how their tickets
ended up in the hands of Japanese fans. They replied that
they had attended the game but had not been able to sit in
their assigned seats. We know this to be largely true
because quite a few of those we approached had gone to the
game on official club coaches.
“We asked Southampton if they had any ideas, and all they
could do was assure us that they did not sell the group the
tickets.
“So that really leaves only one likely source: the black
market. It is not unknown for overseas travel/ticket
agencies (or domestic ones for that matter) to acquire large
batches of tickets by aggressively buying up as many tickets
as they can from the black market to offer to a group of
buyers. The fact that the Japanese visitors were able to sit
together as a large group was because United fans were mixed
up all over the place in the away end at St Mary's.
“And that is where we have got to so far. The tickets did
not come from United direct, nor from sponsors, or a player,
or from the home club.
“We investigate every case we discover of a ticket-holder
selling on their ticket illegally, and will continue to do
so. Any help fans can give us in tracking down black market
tickets is always welcome."