World Cup final tickets are being resold for as high as R57,000 as ticket touts look to capitalise on this year's tournament.
With tickets to rugby's showpiece event at a premium after official tickets to all the knockout matches sold out before Christmas, websites like British online marketplace viagogo.com are offering a legal alternative for those desperate to book their place at the final.
Fans wanting two tickets side by side could have to fork out as much as R135,000 at this late stage.
There are concerns that an increasing number of people are getting their hands on as many tickets as they can in order to make a quick profit with expensive re-sales in the buildup to the tournament that England hosts in September and October.
With a large contingent of South Africans based in England, demand for tickets to the Springbok pool matches has reached an all-time high.
To watch Heyneke Meyer's Boks get their title assault underway against Japan in Brighton, fans will have to fork out as much as R9,000 per ticket.
Tickets for the encounter with Samoa are similarly priced, while fans wanting to watch the Boks take on Scotland in Newcastle will be expected to outlay over R10,000.
It is, however, the Boks' final pool match against the USA at the Olympic Stadium that comes with the highest price tag – a staggering R12,000 per ticket.
The moves have generated outrage among average fans in Britain. In Gloucester, the chairman of the local rugby supporters group spoke out against the profiteering.
The stadium hosts five World Cup matches but even tickets to the match between the United States and Japan are going for about five times the face value.
'One of the big problems with the secondary ticket market is that it is supply and demand and people will pay those prices, even though the whole premise and system is, in my view, outrageous,' Bob Rumble told the Gloucestershire Echo newspaper.
'If people feel that is sufficient value, they will go ahead and buy them, whatever we say. I find it totally wrong and abhorrent to the values of our sport, but that is my personal view.
'If people didn't support this market, hopefully, it would just dry up and go away.'
Photo: Glyn Kirk/Getty Images
