Chelsea have returned 800 unsold Champions League final tickets to Uefa after fans complained of initial prices of up to £515.
Supporters of Manchester City also expressed outrage although Telegraph Sport understands their allocation of 6,000 has now sold out.
Chelsea, however, returned just under a sixth of their allocation, mostly charter packages, which included subsidised flights to Porto.
Supporters said the return of tickets showed “Uefa’s lack of care for fans has again come to the fore”. A total of 5,800 tickets had been taken up by the London club for Saturday’s game. There had been high demand for 2,800 tickets which were sold with independent travel.
A Uefa spokesman confirmed the highest price for a seat was £515, although tickets start at £60.50. However, Chelsea Supporter Trust board member Dan Silver said prices were “outrageous when there were obvious solutions closer to home.”
The financial blow for City had been softened last week after club owner Sheikh Mansour announced he would fund the travel costs of supporters travelling to their first-ever European Cup final. The Estadio do Dragao had been confirmed at the 11th hour after the final was moved from Istanbul due to UK travel restrictions.
However, Kevin Parker, general secretary of Manchester City’s Official Supporters Club, was angered ticket prices were not reduced by Uefa too after plans to move the game to Wembley were torpedoed.
“It could have gone to Wembley, but they didn’t go because they’ve got the VIPs who they wanted to go,” he told Telegraph Sport. “They kept us waiting and waiting.”
Silver, meanwhile, told BBC Sport: “They (Uefa) came to be our friends over the European Super League but now they have turned their backs on us again. Uefa’s insistence on having charter flights – initially linked to 90 per cent of tickets, which the clubs pushed back on – spending only 24 hours in Portugal with added Covid testing and additional costs have made it very prohibitive.”
A capacity of 16,500 had been confirmed for the 50,000-capacity Dragao Stadium, with more tickets going on general sale this week. Sources close to the governing body pointed out the match was still a cheaper ticket than the Super Bowl. Uefa’s pre-Covid reserves of £432.64million are expected to fall to £86.53million by 2023 as a direct result of the costs incurred in moving the European Championship back by a year.
The clubs have not been made aware that any of the 10,000 or so travelling fans are from the Indian variant affected areas of Bedford, Blackburn, Burnley, Kirklees, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside.