Ricky Hatton -- ticket scalper

[Kirkland Laing]

It's on secondsout.com and also in the Guardian :

Ricky Hatton's promotions company paid $3.1m (£1.6m) for 3,900 tickets which were then sold on to fans for the former world champion's Las Vegas fight against Floyd Mayweather last month.




Punch engaged an events company, 90 Minutes, to act as the official box office for the Hatton camp, which was granted its allocation of 3,900 tickets for the fight by the US promoter, Golden Boy Promotions. There were 43,000 applications for tickets. Hatton's associate at 90 Minutes was the controversial Cheshire-based ticket broker Michael Meadowcroft, who in 2001 was given an eight-year disqualification order banning him from operating as a company director.

The high court made the order after one of his ticketing companies, London Sport, went into voluntary liquidation in 1999. The liquidator's report at the time stated that creditors were owed £199,430.

There were six companies that were either dissolved or from which Meadowcroft resigned his directorships after the court order. However, Hatton Sr stated that he had been aware of Meadowcroft's business history and was content with his actions over the Hatton-Mayweather ticket distributions. "We had everything done by Mike and we've had an independent auditor in to conduct an audit into it for us," said Ray Hatton.

The $3.1m paid for the tickets was taken directly out of Hatton's purse for the fight and a ballot was organised for Hatton fans to secure tickets. "There was no point in us sending money out there for them to send back," explained Ray Hatton.

There were allegations on the boxing website Secondsout.com yesterday that the "primary means of ticket distribution was 'scalping'". The report claimed that Hatton's camp made a 30% mark-up on ticket prices.

However, Hatton's father stated that there had been no profits for his company from the sales. "The only extra expenses were to allow for the ballot," said Hatton Sr. He declined to say how much was added on to ticket prices for the ballot expenses.


http://sport.guardian.co.uk/boxing/s...234502,00.html



Will this report gain any traction in the press and will it affect Hatton's popularity if it does?

[donnydarkoIRL]

Businees is Business, but I don't even think he did anything wrong here.

[Mark TKO]

yep business is business

But what I'd like to know is how all these agencies get hold of the tickets though and can legally sell on at 200% mark up - or higher ! That shouldn't be allowed to happen, it's just legal touting.

And its crap like that that leads to empty seats on the night (reckon there were 200 at least) despite there been ten times the demand for genuine fans to get in !

[donnydarkoIRL]

Dead right Mark!