A six-year-old Manchester United fan has had his season ticket restricted as part of the club's anti-touting crackdown, leaving his family devastated.
Katie, the boy's mother, said she had handled away ticket applications for the group of 19 relatives and friends, who all sit together in a singing section at Old Trafford, because deadlines were tight and she worked from home.
The club accused Katie of centrally controlling multiple ticketing accounts, including her son's, due to repeated access and an "extremely high" number of other ticketing accounts.
However, Katie maintains she did nothing wrong, explaining that she had simply helped other family members to use their accounts and had forwarded tickets through the club's official system when necessary.
Katie said her son Ruairi has held a season ticket since birth and regularly attends home, away, and European matches with his family. Supporting Manchester United is "all we do," she said, adding that she met her husband at Old Trafford and had held her own season ticket for nearly 20 years.
Ruairi had been a Manchester United mascot at Crystal Palace last season and had travelled to watch the team in Seville, Istanbul, and Bilbao.
Katie's appeal to the club was turned down, with the club stating that the "scale, frequency, and pattern" of the wider activity had not been satisfactorily explained.
The club concluded that Ruairi's account and its associated tickets had been put under another person's control and used or managed outside its authorised processes.
Katie believes the club's decision was an "AI automated rejection" because it arrived so quickly and appeared to use the same wording as responses received by other supporters.
The club has declined to comment on Ruairi's case, but a spokesperson said similar anti-touting work last season recovered more than 14,000 tickets worth over £1m and returned them to supporters through official channels.
Katie has lodged a further appeal with the club's appeals panel, but Ruairi's account remains restricted.
She said, "The first game of the season, we're definitely going to miss." Katie has not told her son about the restriction, saying, "You can't put that on a six-year-old."
The family's situation has sparked widespread support on social media, with a post on X viewed over 1.3 million times.
The incident has raised concerns about the club's anti-touting measures and the impact they may have on genuine fans.
Source: Yahoo Sports