The UEFA Champions League will see full capacity crowds return to stadiums after an absence spanning nearly a year and a half, as audiences will queue up to watch the biggest competition in European club football unfold in front of their eyes.
Even though it is the case for most clubs that are taking part in this year’s competition, things are looking quite a bit different for Manchester City – as after the club website was unable to sell out tickets, they have been seen to be trying to sell tickets for their UEFA Champions League group stage matches on a deal-of-the-day site known as Wowcher.
As the Champions League returns next week, the runners-up of last year’s competition have been placed in a group also featuring Paris Saint-Germain, RB Leipzig, and Club Brugge.
While the group boasts of four teams with extraordinary talent on display that should attract capacity crowds, some eagle-eyed football fans saw tickets for City’s upcoming match against RB Leipzig being put on sale at a discount on Wowcher, a deal-of-the-day site known for providing cut-price deals.
Wowcher has a claim to fame as the second-largest deal-of-the-day site in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but it is the last place where football fans expected to see Champions League tickets being put up for grabs.
So quite naturally, when the image of the tickets being put on sale surfaced on social media platforms, it immediately went viral and attracted criticism from quite a section of what is the online football community.
Originally priced at £77, the deal-of-the-day site offered the match tickets at £65 – giving a 16% discount in order to fill up seats at the Etihad Stadium for the return of the biggest club football competition in Europe.
While Manchester City were slammed as a club for failing to sell out home tickets for a top-tier European football match under the lights, many rival fans took the opportunity to poke the defending champions of England with Manchester City have been caught selling Champions League tickets on deal-of-the-day site Wowcherthe “tinpot” insults often associated with Sheikh Mansour’s total takeover of the club in 2008.
The Etihad Stadium was full and teeming with thousands of fans only last week during the annual Soccer Aid friendly, but the fact that a Champions League game featuring some of the best footballers around the world struggles to stir up enough interest is one that has baffled and amused online football fans equally.
