Anyone know about attending a soccer game in London?

I am also going to be in London in October and was looking forward to attending a soccer game. I have checked the London's teams fixtures and found a couple of games while we will be there. The last time we were in Manchester we used Stubhub International. The tickets are sort of pricy but it is part of vacation! Is there another source to buy tickets? LMK

Hi:

When I last visited London in Fall 2024, I wanted to attend a Premier League match. My preference was to attend a match with Arsenal or Chelsea but each club's tiered ticket resell policy made their tickets expensive even if they were available. I called around to the other local club's and was told that I could buy a ticket to the West Ham vs Manchester City match taking place that weekend. I had to join the West Ham fan club to make an on the spot purchase then I had to travel to the Queen Elzabeth stadium to pick up the actual ticket prior to the match. After that it was all down hill. I enjoyed the match.

Before I was notified about the availability of the West Ham ticket I had thought about alternatives. One was to see if tickets to any less prestigious teams such as Crystal Palace were available. If that didn't work out I might have purchased a ticket from a street seller though I thought this would have been a risky option.

We attended a game at Craven Cottage in London, Fulham. It was so fun. My husband bought the tickets, and then 24 hours before the game, we received them to his email. They weren't cheap, but like someone else mentioned, it was part of the travel experience, a once-in-a-lifetime event. He is a big Premier League fan, and it was a dream come true for him.

He had to keep checking the dates for games, because we had only a couple of dates that would work for us and only a few locations. I imagine if you want to see a particular team play you would need to look into that team's schedule. We weren't set on a specific team, but Fulham worked out perfectly for us, and we stayed in that neighborhood and were within walking distance of the stadium.

We were in London late April, early May and had the best luck with warm sunny weather.

I believe he used StubHub, but I can check with him when he gets back home later this afternoon. Feel free to send me a private message, and I can have him give you more information about how he went about getting the tickets. It was a process for sure.

The important question is probably "When?" , followed by "how much do you want to pay"?

The Premier league clubs (Arsenal, Brentford, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham and Tottenham are all likely to have their League games sold out - you might possibly be able to get tickets for either hospitality or from Resale sites - but they will be expensive.

Alternatively, look at Lower league sides - Charlton, Millwall, QPR, Watford or West Ham (all Championship - i.e. Level 2) or Wimbledon, Bromley or Leyton Orient.(League 1)

The Lower leagues will probably have a decent atmosphere.

Firstly, strictly speaking it is illegal to sell tickets for football matches in the UK from unauthorised resellers. This includes StubHub. It’s not illegal to buy them though so anyone who has has not broken the law.

Many people have bought successfully as can be seen from the posts above but it is definitely a risky way to do it - the potential for being scammed is high. The only completely safe way to buy tickets is through the club for the game that you want to see. This will be next to impossible for the bigger clubs in the Premier League in London unless you take the hospitality route which can be expensive.

It is much easier and cheaper to buy tickets for games in the Championship or Leagues 1 and 2 as outlined above. It should be very easy for West Ham this season as they have been relegated to the Championship and have a large stadium. (Incidentally it is the London Stadium and not the Queen Elizabeth Stadium, although it is next to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, where the 2012 Olympics were held). A home game at Charlton Athletic is also an excellent choice for visitors as it can be easily attached to a visit to Greenwich.

If any of you are interested in taking in some of the atmosphere that you may have seen during this World Cup I would advise that the atmosphere is perhaps counterintuitively better outside the Premier League.

Finally please note that currently all games in October are shown as kicking off at 3pm on Saturdays. Many games, especially those in the Premier League, will be moved to accommodate live TV and can therefore end up kicking off at any time from Friday evening to Monday evening across the weekend - don’t commit to buying a ticket for a specific game if your schedule cannot cope with a rearranged time.

I was incorrect; my husband used a legitimate reseller to get our tickets. There is a link on the official team's website to look for tickets. He used Live Football Tickets.

Susan - that backs up my point that you should, as your husband did, always look for tickets through a club's official channels. Each club handles things differently and some will have partnerships with outside providers to re-sell tickets, but equally some won't.

Firstly, strictly speaking it is illegal to sell tickets for football matches in the UK from unauthorised resellers. This includes StubHub. It’s not illegal to buy them though so anyone who has has not broken the law.

“Strictly” doesn’t come into it. Everything that is illegal is strictly illegal. There nothing in law that is “sort of illegal”.

Of course people buy from illegal sources, and the risks are as you would expect if you go down that route (and nobody will help or recompense you if you get scammed).

DO IT! Its one of the most amazing cultural experiences I've ever done in London. I've been to three: West Ham v. Reading at the old Upton Park stadium when they were down in the Championship; and Arsenal v. Inter Milan and Arsenal v. Lyon at the Emirates in the Emirates Cup.

My one piece of advice is go to a lower league game instead of the Premiership. Prem tix are near impossible to find. I only got the Arsenal tix because it was a pre-season friendly and I paid for Club Level. The West Ham match was easy to get tix straight from the club website and WAY more atmosphere. I would love to go see Leyton Orient or Millwall or Charlton or Barnet.

I was incorrect; my husband used a legitimate reseller to get our tickets.

Live Football Tickets is an unauthorised reseller (tout) the same as Stubhub. They seem to be based in Madrid.

It's nigh on impossible for the visitor to obtain legitimate tickets for Premier League clubs, particularly in London because of high demand for a limited number of seats. It's best for the visitor and casual fan to stick to the lower league clubs where there's more chance of being able to buy a ticket direct from the club itself through its website. TimW lists some of these clubs in their post further up the thread.

The football industry has had laws in place to protect legitimate fans for quite some time. Legislation has been extended recently to cover industrial-scale scalping of other ticketed events. Here's an article from The BBC about that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj6nlr4wj09o

my husband and son went to a Queen's Park Rangers (QPR) match in London. They didn't know the first thing about QPR, they just wanted to see a match.

They had a blast. The fan atmosphere was great. I don't recall the details about the tickets, but I don't recall them being terribly expensive or hard to come by.

It's been a while since I've attended a Premier League match, but I'm sharing my experience in case it helps others. Tickets are normally released in tiers- first to club members, then if there are any left, to the general public. For popular matches they normally don't make it past the members stage. Membership isn't terribly expensive- when I last had a membership to Chelsea, which was some time ago, it was something like £35, tho I am sure it is more now. Now with very popular matches, such as against other particularly popular teams or later stages of big competitions (Champions League, FA Cup), even members need a certain number of points to get a ticket. You earn points by going to matches, and going to less popular matches gets you more points. So for example, people who've been to several matches against teams closer to the bottom of the table, or group stage Champions League matches, will have accrued points and get first opportunity to purchase tickets for something like Chelsea v Man City.

All this is to say- if you want to go to a Premier League match and do so legitimately, purchase a membership and look for matches that are likely to be less popular. And of course be ready to go online as soon as tickets are on sale!

A final thing to keep in mind, as mentioned above, is that matches always start out scheduled for Saturday afternoons but get moved around the weekend based on the tv schedule. Matches shown at 3pm on Saturdays cannot be shown on (UK) tv but others can so they will move the more popular fixtures to allow for tv viewing. I hope that was somewhat helpful.

Yes, my mistake, apparently we did get tickets through a third-party seller. The cost was $150 each; it worked out for us, but that's not to say that there are scammers out there. Yes, the price was a bit high, but we had front row tickets right on the corner overlooking the field, and my husband was overjoyed to see a Premier League game. We didn't know about the rules of not purchasing through Live Football or other sellers. Yes, buyer beware, what worked out for us, may not work out for others.

Anyhow, cheers to you all and enjoy your trip to London, it is a lovely city, and we hope to be back someday.

If any of you are interested in taking in some of the atmosphere that you may have seen during this World Cup I would advise that the atmosphere is perhaps counterintuitively better outside the Premier League.

With very few exceptions the atmosphere is so much better in many of the Championship matches (the league below the Premier League). Portsmouth FC is regularly voted as having the loudest fans and the most atmospheric stadium, Fratton Park, and will outdo the atmosphere of almost all Premier League stadiums however that's not much use to you unless you want to jump on the train at Waterloo or Victoria and walk the short distance from Fratton station to catch a match.

The two London clubs playing in the Championship with the best rated atmosphere are Charlton Athletic and Millwall. Tickets for either team will be much easier to get hold of in comparison to any of the Premier League teams and you'll probably get to watch a more exciting game as it's a tough league with all teams pushing hard for promotion or against relegation.

but I don't recall them being terribly expensive or hard to come by.

That’s because QPR are not in the EPL. Tickets for The Championship and below are much easier to come by.