For 147 years The Open Championship was truly open to all fans. If you wanted to visit The Open you could simply turn up at the gate and buy a ticket. There was no limit on the number of fans allowed on the course so a spur of the moment day out was always an option.
That changed for the first Open held outside of mainland Britain. Such was the pent-up demand for a Northern Irish Open, it was thought that chaos would ensue at Portrush if the whole of Ireland got in their cars to head to the event. As a result a capped number of tickets went on sale, on a first-come-first served basis, and sold out almost a year before the event.
The Open at the Portrush was the first not to have tickets available on the gate
The R&A seemed to realise that they were onto a good thing. Selling out The Open in advance guarantees income for the event and makes planning so much easier. They embraced the idea and announced that the 2020 event in Royal St George’s was also be a ticket-only event. This time the excuse was, err, transport logistics. Forget that many Opens had been held there before quite happily, Portrush had shown there was a different way. Once again they sold the event out many months ahead of the (Covid-postponed) event.
St Andrews has famously seen some huge attendances at Opens over the years, but with the 150th edition coming up, the R&A have gone even further. Not only would this event be pre-sold, but, to make it fair, it would be balloted. Fans from all over the world entered and the tickets have become prized possessions. There are murmurings from locals that there seems to be a disproportionate number of overseas ballot ‘winners’ but the local hoteliers aren’t complaining. And neither is the R&A.
On one level the R&A seems to have done something pretty clever. By putting a (high) cap on the number of tickets they have introduced a sense of scarcity which is driving demand. From an income point of view it is a fairly virtuous circle.
But will this becomes the norm in the future? Next year the event goes to Hoylake. This has been a well-attended Open venue in the past, so I can see the R&A announcing that it will be ticketed in advance again. You can see here the variances in attendances by venue over the last few years:
2019 Portrush - 237,750
2018 Carnoustie - 172,000
2017 Birkdale - 235,000
2016 Troon - 173,000
2015 St Andrews - 237,000
2014 Hoylake - 203,000
2013 Muirfield - 142,000
2012 Lytham - 180,000
2011 Royal St George’s - 180,000
2010 St Andrews - 201,000
2009 Turnberry - 123,000
The 2024 staging is at Royal Troon. As always in the past, you could buy a ticket on the door but I can see them once again stirring up demand by creating a scarcity of supply.
There are a couple of side-effects of this approach from the R&A.
Firstly, and I recognise this may be blithely naive, it takes away some of the romance of the event. If the weather was particularly fine and a local favourite was doing well, people from all over used to be able to flock to the grounds to cheer them on on the last day. I know someone who had a bet on Greg Norman in 1993 and drove from Aberdeen to Royal St George’s overnight to help bring him home. This new approach takes all of that away.
It will have an impact on attendances from locals too. Now they have to plan a year ahead if they want to visit rather than just decide to go in on the day. Indeed for St Andrews many locals simply didn’t get tickets in the ballot so can’t attend.
Secondly, the R&A has created a thriving secondary market for tickets. People who ‘won’ the tickets in the ballot are selling them on Viagogo and StubHub for huge profits. Tickets for the Sunday are are currently starting at around £460 each on StubHub.
I imagine the R&A would say two things to counter these arguments.
Firstly, they would say that you aren’t allowed to resell your ticket and that they reserve the right to refuse admission. The only problem is that there is no system in place to check that the person holding the ticket at the gate is the person who bought it. Nothing at all. So the threat is completely meaningless.
In fact, the FAQ only serves to encourage this behaviour you may think when it says, ‘The tickets are fully transferrable and can be sent digitally to friends and family. The name of the ticket purchaser will be displayed on the ticket, but this will not restrict use of the ticket and it is not necessary for the original ticket purchaser to be in attendance at the event.’
Secondly, they have set up an official page for fans with tickets to resell them. This page is buried deep on The Open website, and is only open to those who originally applied to the ballot. Oh, and guess what? There are hardly any tickets available there because everyone is selling theirs on StubHub or Viagogo.
When I went back to The Open and questioned whether they would consider opening up the resale platform to a wider audience they told me that this would not be happening and offered me a place on the hospitality waiting list instead.
They then gave me links to organisations who had very high end packages available, explaining that, ‘these are travel agencies with which we have an agreement that they can package tickets with accommodation and travel’. Well the good news is that they do have tickets, the bad news is the cheapest option they had was £2,499 for a single ticket to the Thursday round, 2 night’s accommodation in the university halls of residence (sharing a room) and a round at the Kittocks course. Not for me thanks!
So the R&A’s ticketing policy, which guarantees them maximum gate revenues, has created a secondary market which is making a bunch of touts and travel agencies pretty wealthy.
I was talking about this to a friend the other day and he basically told me to grow up! He made the point that virtually every other great sports event in the world is sold out in advance and it was just a fact of life.
He’s probably right. I can understand why the R&A wants certain (and maximum) revenue. In fairness, they are spending the money well on grass root initiatives across the board. But if that is the case then they should put mechanisms in place to stop the resale of tickets.
Technology is there now to make this a lot easier than it used to be. For example, they could make it mandatory to have all tickets purchased on an app which you use to gain entry. It’s not rocket science!
I suspect going back to the old way of doing things is a forlorn hope. I hope I’m wrong, but The Open has come across a good wheeze and they aren’t likely to change.