Ruairi is six years old. He lives five minutes from Old Trafford. He was a mascot for a Manchester United win over Crystal Palace earlier this year. He has gone to away games in Seville, Istanbul and Bilbao.
He is also, according to the club’s automated ticketing system, under suspicion of being a ticket tout. His account has been frozen. His family is terrified he might lose his season ticket.
The outrage hit a boiling point this week when his mother Kate posted about the situation on social media. The post has been viewed nearly two million times.
“It’s scandalous,” Kate told The Independent. “You can put so much worry on this. We can’t tell our son that he’s not going to United. It’s our life.”
Ruairi is one of what appears to be thousands of fans caught in a wide-ranging investigation by Manchester United into ticket touting. The club sent near-identical emails to hundreds of supporters, informing them that their accounts had been flagged for “patterns linked to access to your ticketing account that we need to understand more clearly.”
In Ruairi’s case, the so-called anomaly was simple: Kate logged into his account. She manages 11 family and friends’ accounts. They all sit together in the same singing section of the Stretford End, an arrangement the club helped create. Kate explained all of this in her appeal.
It didn’t matter. The account was still restricted. The appeal will take at least a month.
“We can’t apply for Hull away,” Kate said. “So whether you like to say the word ban or not, you’ve banned my six-year-old. He’s definitely missing that first away game of the season.”
Fans vs. the Algorithm
The Manchester United Supporters Trust, known as MUST, has been in daily meetings with the club trying to de-escalate what they describe as “a war on the hardcore fanbase.” They want to work together to stop actual touts. But they say the club’s approach is backward.
“Effectively banning people and asking them to prove they shouldn’t be banned offends against all natural justice,” a MUST spokesperson said. “Groups of fans do share logins for each other’s ticketing accounts, and that is not evidence of touting.”
United insists there is no ticketing process that requires a supporter to access another person’s account. The club says any season tickets that get canceled will simply be reissued to someone on the waiting list.
But the trust and many fans see a bigger trend. United has reduced its season ticket allocation from about 53,000 in 2019 to roughly 47,000 now. Hospitality seating keeps expanding. The price gap between a season ticket and buying individual match tickets through a general membership has grown to hundreds of pounds.
“One hundred percent, they don’t want us,” Kate said. “They don’t want the working class fan. They don’t want your standard season ticket holders.”
Down the M62, Liverpool recently announced they had seized £1.2 million from organized ticket touts and issued 432 lifetime bans. But for United fans watching their own club’s approach, the skepticism is hard to shake. A six-year-old is going to miss the first away game of the season because his mom logged into his account. That’s not a victory against touting. That’s something else entirely.
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