UFC Sweden tickets sold out in record time—to ticket resellers and are being resold to Swedish fans at “not so friendly” prices.
While it’s true that, as reported in Sherdog.com, the tickets were “sold out in three hours, making it the fastest-selling event on European soil in the promotion’s history,” the average Swedish fan is more depressed than impressed.
The UFC will debut in Sweden this April 14, 2012, as UFC on Fuel TV 2, and headlined by a light heavyweight battle between 24-year-old Swedish rising prospect Alexander Gustafsson and highly-regarded veteran Antonio Rogerio Nogueira of Brazil.
UFC Sweden is indeed a historical international milestone for UFC, but avid MMA fan and practitioner Bherlin Gildo of GBG MMA might as well end up outside the Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm that night—with the venerable Octagon out of sight.
In our interview last February 27, the Gothenburg resident laments that,
I was supposed to buy a ticket for UFC Sweden, but the price now is 3,000 Swedish kronor (around 450 US dollars), before it was only 500 kr [about US$75.00]. There are also tickets being sold for 4,000 kr (US$600.00).
You’d think that many are really interested to watch, but it turned out the ticket sharks are the ones who bought the bulk of the tickets.
Another fan in Sweden, who preferred to be identified only as Stockholm, shared that,
“Non-official” ticket companies bought up a big bunch and the prices are now over the roof.
Nosebleed section was originally US$70.00, it has now gone up to US$250.00. Best seats are around US$1,000.00.
Not OK!
Well, as a sign of hope, it appears that the prices of the tickets being sold by the ticket resellers are already deflating. In Martin Johansson’s article for MMANytt.se last January 24, he mentioned the following quotations (emphasis in bold figures mine):
There are tickets left for the UFC: Sweden. When I did a quick search on the block, I found a ticket in the stalls for 8,000 [kr, around US$1,200.00]. There is an increase of 6,000 kr [US$900.00] for a place on the 12th row. “Sugar prices,” some may say, and to some extent, that statement is correct.
Johansson concludes with the following advice:
In order to obtain a solution for this, the authorities will have to act. What you can do is to get the authorities to understand that consumers are in a risk when they buy tickets in any other way than the original source. Write a letter, make a phone call or send an email to your local authority.
We cannot stop ticket sharks on their own, but if we work hard enough maybe together we can get the authorities to act before the UFC is coming to Sweden for next time. Because you should not have to put out 8,000 KR for a ticket just because you happened to oversleep.
It will be first come [first serve] on equal terms.
Karlo Silverio III Sevilla is a Contributor for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand.
Here’s the link to Blocket.se, one of the popular buy-and-sell websites in Sweden, with updated UFC Sweden ticket prices.
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