Fans return 1,000 tickets as Champions League price hikes spell misery

Kiev (AFP) – Real Madrid fans have returned 1,000 tickets for Saturday’s Champions League final against Liverpool as spiralling accommodation and travel costs deter supporters from travelling to Kiev.

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said the tickets could not be resold to Liverpool fans for security reasons but they would instead be put on sale for local fans in the Ukrainian capital.

As anger mounts over the rocketing prices and cancelled bookings — with some hotels charging up to 100 times their standard rates — Liverpool said they had complained to the “highest levels” of European football’s governing body.

Ukrainian UEFA vice-president Grigoriy Surkis criticised the behaviour of hotel owners looking to make a quick buck for the clash between the two European giants, who have won the competition 17 times between them.

“I am not disappointed, I am furious,” he told AFP. “I think it is a disgrace for the capital, where individual hotel owners did not give everyone a chance to come here by raising the prices not ten-fold, the way it happens in other cities, but nearly a hundredfold.”

Liverpool chief executive Peter Moore said Kiev, which hosted the Euro 2012 final, was not fit for purpose.

“They just don’t have the airport infrastructure and the hotel capacity to cope with an event of this size and there isn’t another major city within real hitting distance of it,” he told the Liverpool Echo newspaper.

“It’s not only affected Liverpool fans but Real Madrid fans too. There will be lessons learned from this. Rest assured, I’ve raised this at the highest levels of UEFA.”

The decision to award the final to Kiev was made before Ceferin’s election as president in 2016 and the Slovenian has already reintroduced a tender process with evaluation reports on cities bidding for finals.

Istanbul’s 76,000-capacity Ataturk Olympic Stadium was named as the host for the 2020 final on Thursday, while next season’s final will take place at Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano.

Ceferin admitted that the black market for tickets was a big problem, with each club originally allocated 16,626 tickets despite worldwide fanbases.

According to UEFA, Kiev’s Olimpiyskiy Stadium has a capacity of 63,000 for the game.

“We cancelled the tickets that were on the black market but the thing is I am not sure if it is possible to completely prevent it, but we are trying to do as much as possible,” he said.

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