Your Money blog: Why Rugby must swing low at Viagogo

George North of Wales celebrates after scoring the opening try during the Six Nations match between Wales and Ireland on March 10. Stu Forster / Getty Images

The Six Nations champions may have already been decided but tickets for Saturday’s clash in Dublin between England and Ireland are being listed at more than €400 on the Viagogo website.

Anyone thinking of buying one should think again.

The web is awash with accounts from fans that have been misled by this agency and others. It’s not just about sport. British prime minister Theresa May has pledged to crackdown on secondary ticket selling companies after being deluged by complaints from angry fans.

Viagogo came in for particular criticism for re-selling tickets for an Ed Sheeran charity gig at a massive mark up. The British press has carried numerous stories in recent weeks about fans who have lost money by booking through the agency.

Last Friday in the Principality Stadium in Cardiff as Ireland took on Wales, I understood why the company has attracted such scorn.

With the roof on and the Welsh and Irish fans in full voice, the atmosphere was electric.

Before the game, the streets around the stadium were crammed with merry fans draped with flags and wearing daffodils, sheep head hats and tri-colour wigs.

Win or lose, everyone was there to enjoy the spectacle. The day started with fish and chips on the chilly beach of Barry Island and ended in a suburban Cardiff kebab shop, where sporting insights were slurred between chilli hot bites of pitta-wrapped meat of an unspecified origin.

With a quick sideways glance to eliminate eavesdroppers, the man behind the counter of the Barry shop selling Gavin and Stacey seaside rock, enquires if we are over to see the game.

“I shouldn’t really say this, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you lot won tonight – at least it would stop the ******* English,” he says with guilty schadenfreude – a word that is probably even longer in Welsh.

The next morning, Pam and Mark, our gracious and charming Cardiff hosts, are up before us, cooking a mighty breakfast and apologising for the Welsh victory before we head up the M4 to the airport.

It was what great sporting days are all about – or at least what they should be about.

My two brothers and sister-in-law should have been there as well to enjoy the game and celebrate my eldest siblings’ birthday.

They booked through Viagogo several weeks earlier. Right up to the day before the game they were told not to worry, after all Viagogo guarantees its tickets. It was nonsense. The tickets never came and they lost hundreds of pounds in flights to the UK for a pointless trip.

But what of the guarantee?

“Well we do guarantee to do our best to source tickets”, came the surreal reply.

And compensation?

“Well, you are eligible for a special gift the next time you book with us sir.”

The much bigger question, and one to be asked of the sport’s governing bodies, is why we need ticket agencies at all.

Why do we need this artificial market that appears only to line the pockets of fat cat agency bosses at the expense of real fans.

It is seventeen years since former Manchester United midfielder Roy Keane famously took a swipe at the “prawn sandwich” brigade. Not much has changed.

Viagago did not respond to questions about how many fans found themselves without tickets for the Ireland-Wales clash.

The Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) advises fans to avoid non-approved companies like Viagogo and instead join a local rugby club to purchase tickets directly or through its approved agency.

The WRU and other home nation rugby bodies do it this way, they say, to try to keep money in the game.

But despite their best efforts, agencies like Viagogo seem to be flourishing – even as more horror stories from out-of-pocket fans emerge by the day.

Sport is being ruined by a ticketing system that is not working. Outsourcing, so often born from the desire to create efficiencies ends up with just distortions – as it does in many other non-sporting contexts.

It would have been nice to see more youngsters at the game in Cardiff last weekend but how many families can afford to pay the sort of sums being demanded by agencies like Viagogo?

Myself and the kids will be watching Saturday’s clash on the telly.

The Fields of Athenry won’t sound quite the same as in the Aviva. But at least we will not be tacitly funding a broken system that appears to be benefitting agencies more than local clubs.

And as for the match, in the words of Barry Island’s finest purveyor of speciality Gavin & Stacey themed rock - “I just hope the ******* English don’t win.”

Follow us on Twitter @TheNationalPF