How to Buy Tickets for England Football Matches

This article will describe the process for getting tickets to one of the world's most exciting sporting events -- an England national team football match. It will describe the ticketing process, how to become a member of the official England supporters club and why it is never, ever OK to buy tickets from a third-party or black-market source.

Instructions

1. Log onto the FA's website (see Resources). To purchase tickets, you will first need what is known as a FAN number. This serves as a PIN for thefa.com. It can be obtained simply by registering at thefa.com. Doing so enables you to buy tickets from the FA, as well as purchase official England merchandise and participate in various Web-based promotions. It is free. Tickets go on sale first to members of the official England supporters club, englandfans. For information on joining, see Step 2. Once you have a FAN number, simply check thefa.com to see when tickets for matches go on sale. A schedule of future matches will be available, and tickets generally are available a month and a half before the match. Tickets are not mailed out until about two weeks before the match. If you don't receive yours within two days of the match, contact Ticketmaster by phone in England at 0870 153 5353.Bear in mind that different matches will attract differing levels of interest. The World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan, for example, has tickets available to the general public at the time of writing (Sept. 7). A match against, for example, Germany or France or Italy would likely attract a massive interest, and tickets would sell out very quickly, if they were even made available to the general public at all.The seating capacity at Wembley is somewhere in the neighborhood of 90,000.

2. Join englandfans: Tickets are put on sale first to members of the official England supporters' club, englandfans. Membership information is available through thefa.com. Membership does not guarantee receiving tickets for a particular match. There are multiple tiers, with only members of the top tier, englandfans+, having the opportunity to purchase tickets for away and tournament games. Fees for new members for the 2008-10 period, which ends at the conclusion of the 2010 World Cup (the FA having rather optimistically forecast that England will be IN the 2010 World Cup!) are: englandfans+: 70 pounds for adults and 40 pounds for juniors.englandfans: 50 pounds for adults and 35 pounds for juniors. Renewing members are five pounds less in each category. Note that these fees are for online accounts. Offline accounts are available, meaning that all correspondence will be by mail, but there are additional fees.Junior tickets are only available in the family sections of the stadium. You cannot purchase a junior ticket and give it to an adult.

3. Get group tickets: Group tickets are only available for England matches for school groups. Arrangements must be made by the school. The FA does not sell adult group tickets to England matches, and indeed sales are limited to five per person. You cannot use the same credit card in multiple orders.

4. Purchase tickets as an away supporter: This can be done only through your country's football association. Do NOT purchase tickets from the FA if you are a visiting supporter. Supporters at England games are segregated, and if you are found to be a supporter of the opposition in the England end, you will be thrown out.In reality, you probably could get away with it, but only if you're not obvious about it. Show up in a Germany shirt and no one's likely to miss it. And, really, if you're not allowed to cheer for your side, what's the fun of it? If you're going as a "neutral" supporter who just wants to check out an England game, don't cheer for the other team! Cheer for England. And do a bit of research so you know what colors the opposition wear, then don't wear those colors.

Tips & Warnings

• If you live in the United States and attend sporting events there, you're probably wondering what other venues are available for purchasing England tickets. You may have bought tickets to a big game on eBay, or from a ticket broker, or even from a scalper outside the game. Surely the same things are available for England tickets, seeing as they're so popular, right?

• Wrong. Very wrong.

• Understand this: Ticket scalping, or touting as it's known in England, is illegal. Very illegal. It is taken very, very seriously. If you are caught simply buying a ticket illegally, it's unlikely you'll be in any legal trouble, although your ticket will be confiscated and it's entirely possible you'll be banned from future England games.

• If you're caught selling a ticket illegally, however, you are likely to be arrested and quite possibly jailed. It's that serious. Hooliganism is still a problem in football, although the dark days of the 1980s are long past. One of the main reasons that they're long past is because they take ticket touting so very seriously.

• The FA warns that when it finds out tickets are being sold over the Internet, it will cancel them. Don't show up at Wembley with a canceled ticket, or you'll be in quite a mess.

• Again: It might be tempting, but seriously. Don't do it.

Resources

• The official home of the English Football Association
• The ticketing portion of the FA's Web site, with details on available games and purchase dates, as well as information on joining the official supporters' club.
• The official Web site of englandfans, including registration information. Turn off your pop-up blocker before viewing the site.