In October 2023, Galatasaray travelled to Old Trafford to face Manchester United in the Champions League.
The Turkish side won 3-2 and many of their fans ended up in the home end. Manchester United initially tried to blame their own fans for selling tickets to Galatasaray supporters, but it quickly became clear that so-called hospitality packages were an issue.
For every game, domestically or in Europe, anyone can go on the Manchester United website, or via a third party such as Viagogo, and buy a ticket. Those tickets often come with added benefits like a drink and a sausage roll or equivalent, and they are then repackaged as hospitality and sold for much higher prices.
There’s also the issue of Manchester United season ticket holders selling their tickets back to the club, which they’re often able to do if they can’t attend, and those tickets then ending up back for sale – to anyone – at a hugely inflated price.
It’s obviously been causing some annoyance in the fanbase, and the situation came to something of a head for many Athletic Club Bilbao fans on Thursday evening.
The 2025 Europa League final is being held in Bilbao, so once the Basque club got to the semi-finals, it was felt a dream was ahead. Even after losing 3-1 to Manchester United in the first leg, there was a surprising amount of confidence around the club that a miraculous comeback was on the cards.
Therefore, many were prepared to pay whatever it took to get into Old Trafford and witness things.
So they went on Manchester United’s website and bought tickets of the kind mentioned earlier. Many were then turfed out after celebrating Athletic’s goal, and some didn’t even get through the turnstiles.
That’s seen anger and confusion, but the fans don’t believe they were doing anything wrong.
Bilbao newspaper El Correo has a big article on what went down. They’ve spoken to an Athetic fan who wanted to go by the initials I.S.. He and a friend bought two hospitality tickets for £275 each, putting his address down honestly as Spain.
It’s explained that when Athletic played AS Roma, there was a geo-lock on buying tickets whilst in Spain, but the fans insist Manchester United didn’t have anything like that in place.
I.S. is quoted as saying: “Anyone can buy them. We bought them through the United app. There, we gave our names and addresses, zip code, city, country… And of course, there was no important notice about not being able to buy them from Spain.
“We weren’t wearing any Athletic Club badges, no scarf, no shirt. The atmosphere was strange because we weren’t the only Athletic Club fans in the area. Someone started saying ‘a lot of Spanish people here’.”
Then Mikel Jauregizar scored the opener.
“We didn’t even move or get up. We just hugged each other very gently, and nothing more. One of the guys nearby did get up, and they started pointing at him and shouting ‘Spanish, Spanish.’ Security came after him.
“The guy next to us started pointing at us. He said, ‘These guys too.’ Then someone else joined in. Security caught us and threw us out of the stadium. The home fans were very aggressive, yelling, ‘Spanish, Spanish.’ We weren’t bothering anyone. We didn’t celebrate, we didn’t even cheer. They kept saying, ‘Spanish, Spanish,’ and they kicked us out for it.”
They then tried to get answers from the ticket office, where they found many other Athletic supporters: “I think there could have been more of us, but I’m sure there were a hundred of us affected. There, they were also treated rudely. They told us there were too many of us, that we couldn’t be there, and that we should get out of the stadium area.
“I think all of us who had gotten inside the stadium were from the hospitality area because you couldn’t buy tickets from other stands. We saw a family who had paid almost €2,300 for seven tickets and they kicked them out. And there was a Spanish boy wearing a United shirt who was also sent home.”
El Correo quote another Athletic fan joining with the complaints: “They wouldn’t let us into the stadium because we were Athletic fans. We went through the (security) turnstiles. We were fully covered, with no Athletic shirts in sight. We saw how they were kicking more people out. It was a disgrace. They treated us terribly. They made us dizzy. They dragged us from one place to another, as if they were going to relocate us with the Athletic fans, but in the end, we couldn’t even get in.”
There may be a purposeful dose of naivety in some of these comments. Anyone who attends football matches or even watches them regularly, will know that fans are often turfed out if they’re in the wrong section, especially if they’re celebrating. If you were travelling overseas and paying over the odds then you’d surely check the situation a little more… unless you didn’t really want to know the truth and just hoped it’d all work out.
Noting that AS Roma banned the sales of tickets to people in Spain is another clue that not all the fans will have been as astonished as they suggest at it being an issue. It feels like they thought they’d found a loophole and used it.
Despite of all of that, the finger of blame rightly comes around to Manchester United again. After warning their own fans repeatedly about selling tickets to away fans, especially after the Galatasaray incidents, it’s something the club are repeatedly doing themselves.
Reading between the lines of El Correo’s report, it’s likely the Premier League club made many thousands of pounds last night from selling tickets to people from Spain who they then turfed out.
If there were no warnings, as the fans claimed, then that’s a first step, with the second obviously being a geo-block.
Manchester United have quite clearly been selling tickets to away fans on a repeat basis, without a great deal being done to stop it… other then snipes at their own fans and loose assurances.
