Last Wednesday, July 15, Manchester United fan Dee, who has attended matches since 1989, when he was 13 years old, and has held a season ticket since 2000, received an email about ticketing from the club titled ‘ACCOUNT Restriction’.
“My first reaction was shock and worry,” Dee explains of the message.
Like other fans The Athletic has spoken to for this article who received similar notifications — prompting anger on social media — Dee does not want us to use his full name, because he is concerned that speaking publicly might affect his chances of accessing tickets in the future.
The email, which The Athletic has seen, reads:
Dear Dee,
Demand for tickets at Old Trafford remains extremely high, and the club has a responsibility to ensure tickets are accessed and used fairly by supporters. One of the most regular complaints we receive is around automated activity on our website, impacting genuine supporters when trying to purchase tickets.
Following a detailed review of activity across our ticketing and digital platforms, we have identified sustained activity associated with your account, or accounts that appear to be controlled by you, which may indicate a breach of the club’s terms and conditions.
As a result, your account has been temporarily restricted from making further transactions. Any tickets currently held for upcoming matches have also been deactivated while we complete our review.
We understand that receiving this communication may be concerning. No final decision has been made, and there may be legitimate explanations for the activity identified. This process is intended to give you the opportunity to provide further information so that your circumstances can be reviewed fully and fairly.
To allow us to undertake a full review, please email a written response by 8am on Monday, July 27.
- Confirmation of every device regularly used to access your account, including mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers.
- Confirmation of whether any of these devices are also used to access other ticketing accounts. Please provide the names of the account holders and explain why you access those accounts.
- Confirmation of whether your account is regularly accessed from multiple locations. Please provide details of each location.
- A brief explanation of how your account is accessed and managed, addressing each of the points above.
- A copy of valid photographic identification.
This investigation is based on activity between March and Sunday, July 12, your response only needs to cover this timeframe.
Dee sent a detailed response to all the questions, explaining which devices he accesses his account from and confirming he does not use any automated software, bots, scripts or third-party tools to access tickets.
He listed the names on his account, explained his relationship to each of them and said the accounts are not used for any commercial purpose or to circumnavigate the club’s ticketing policies. He confirmed the locations from which he accessed his account and set out, in detail, why he was in these locations.
“I have never sold my tickets to anyone,” Dee tells The Athletic.
Three days later, he received an email from the club lifting the temporary restrictions “following a full assessment of the material provided”.
Dee is one of hundreds of United fans who have had similar emails from United, and many are expressing unhappiness about them.
Manchester United fans wait for the players outside Old Trafford last season (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
What has the reaction been?
Negative. Social media lit up with angry and anxious supporters saying they had received emails. Most replied to the message stating their case, but others said they would not bother. Some lashed out at United’s fan representatives — volunteers who have been working behind the scenes to try to help.
With trust between supporters and the club dented, some have accused United of treating them like suspects but with no evidence presented to them, the implication of the emails being that some accounts were being used for the improper purchasing of tickets. Some expressed the view that the emails were disproportionate and that the club had taken a block-first-ask-questions-later approach.
“The net has been cast very wide,” one fan representative told The Athletic. “I’m all for stopping touts, but the sentiment feels as bad as when the club removed concessions and priced remaining tickets at £66.”
Another fan, J, got the notification and was also subsequently cleared. “The anxiety I felt just from the email made me feel like I’d lost everything,” he says. “I told my family that I might not be able to go to the football, due to a reason that I had not been part of. I’ve never touted tickets or anything of the sort.”
“We were hit with the emails last week regarding suspicious activity but with no evidence to properly challenge what we’d done,” explains another supporter, O. “We panicked and appealed, which was rejected by the club within the hour, and then given 72 hours to re-appeal. Again, no evidence was given. We’re in limbo, stressed and anxious, knowing we’re about to lose a hobby, along with the European away credits collected over the years. I appreciate they need to tackle touts, but this isn’t the way to do it.”
“I was in complete disbelief,” explains another fan, who travels to all games from Northern Ireland. “I was about to pay for something at a till, and when I got my phone out I saw the email from United and it knocked me sick.
“To read what felt like accusations and a portrayal of you that simply isn’t true, with no evidence in the email to substantiate any of their claims, is bad enough. Then to get to the bottom of the email and read that my son was banned as well… basically guilt by association.”
The supporter has appealed.
What have the club said about this issue?
In an explanation message to Dee, United said: “A very small percentage of users interact with our ticketing platform in ways that can closely resemble activity associated with attempts to circumvent our systems. While we recognise that your account activity was entirely legitimate, it shared characteristics that required further review.
“We appreciate that this process may have been frustrating. However, we hope you understand why, in the interests of protecting genuine supporters, we have employed a specialist external company to help carry out these investigations where automated monitoring identifies unusual activity.
“Our review process is designed to ensure that these cases receive human assessment rather than relying solely on automated data, helping us distinguish between genuine supporters and those attempting to misuse the club’s ticketing systems. In your case, following that review, we are satisfied that this was a false positive.”
The Athletic put the points raised in this article to United.
The club say one of the biggest complaints they have had from fans for years now is to do with ticket touting, which has become more widespread and focused on bot activity, particularly around members’ ticket releases for home fixtures and season-ticket-holder releases for returned away tickets.
United hold back 200 tickets from each away allocation (typically 3,000) for their players, and not all of these are taken. They then put these back on the market in phases in the week leading up to a given game and say that when they do, bots are snapping them up. United say a small number of season-ticket holders are passing on their usernames and passwords to friends, who then make applications from their account. This behaviour replicates that of a bot, which is why they have been flagged.
The club hired an external specialist at the end of last season on a trial basis to help analyse account login data and fans’ behaviour online to try to tackle the issues. This arrangement was made permanent in the middle of June. United say everything they are seeing is because of that analysis and that they did not know people were sharing usernames and passwords.
There is an understanding within the club about the anxiety caused by that first batch of emails, which were received out of the blue. Subsequent correspondence has been amended.
United deny this is revenue-driven or that they want to reduce the number of season tickets. The club also say the correspondence they are sending out is a request for information, not a sanction. But there is a restriction on people’s apps while United wait for the information requested, with an actual person (rather than a machine) going through the cases.
The club also sent 20,000 similar emails to members (not season-ticket holders) at the end of last season and say 95 per cent of recipients did not reply. Their position is that they are trying to protect the integrity of the ticketing system for everyone’s benefit.
