India vs Pakistan match tickets scam rocks Champions Trophy 2025!! Will ICC act now?

The International Cricket Council (ICC) seems to have found a new way to dupe Cricket fans across the globe as Champions Trophy 2025 nears. After making a mess of the ICC T20 World Cup 2024, the International Body seems directionless for the upcoming Champions Trophy 2025.

Be it ticketing, logistics, venues, broadcasting, or operational arrangements, the T20 World Cup 2024 serves as a perfect 'Recipe for Disaster'. So much so, that certain top-level ICC officials had to resign after the fiasco, the latest entrant in the club being, ICC CEO, Geoff Allardice.

T20 World Cup 2024 was one of the 'Disasters of the Decade' for the ICC

Although Allardice's resignation is being linked to the delays in venue completion of the ICC Champions Trophy 2025, the T20 World Cup mismanagement can't be washed off the stained shoulders of Allardice.

Hardly had the T20 World Cup nightmare passed, that the ICC headed for more trouble before Champions Trophy 2025. Earlier, India's participation in the tournament kept on lingering with the ICC watching the entire drama as a mere spectator.

When Jay Shah took over as the ICC Chair on December 1, 2024, the Indian team's participation became clear as the BCCI, PCB, and ICC agreed to a Hybrid Model for the Champions Trophy with India playing its games in Dubai.

After that, the renovation of Stadiums set to host the Champions Trophy in Pakistan became a major issue and the International Cricket Council did nothing but watch the entire fiasco unfold in front of their eyes.

Pakistan Cricket Board casually skipped multiple deadlines provided by the ICC for the Stadium handover and the ICC acted as a spineless body, making no swift arrangements for the tournament.

What is the ICC doing?

Now that the teams' participation and venue management are secured, multiple star players have been ruled out of the ICC Champions Trophy, a large number of which had sustained injuries playing franchise Cricket across the Globe.

This not only dents the International Cricket Boards and teams but also puts a question mark on the International Cricket Council and its position as a Governing and Regulatory body of World Cricketing affairs.

Now after all the drama, the ICC seems ill-informed regarding the fans' experience, the most important stakeholders of the game. The recent episode of ICC mismanagement comes from the ticketing experience of the ICC Champions Trophy 2025.

With last-minute decisions and no clarity on where the final of the tournament would take place, the ICC has already kept the fans in darkness and will lift the lid on the ticket sales of the finale will only be released after the 1st semi-final of the tournament.

Now with so much drama going around, the ICC has kept the ticketing responsibilities of the Dubai-based matches to itself with the tickets being available only on their website online. No offline stores have been set up by the ICC for its Dubai leg tickets for the Champions Trophy 2025.

India vs Pakistan ticket scam rocks Champions Trophy 2025

Fans trying to purchase the tickets officially through the website are now not able to do so as the ICC official website mentions that all the tickets that have been released so far have been sold out and no tickets for the matches are available officially.

Although ICC claims that tickets are unavailable for the games, ticket aggregators like Viagogo who have already duped a lot of customers across multiple events and concerts, a testimonial of which is already present on the web, have access to a bunch of tickets for the Dubai based matches.

The highly shocking aspect of this fact is that ICC had mentioned in their press release that the minimum ticket price for the Dubai-based matches would be 125 Dirhams or INR 2956 (as of 12th Feb 2025). However, Viagogo is selling 1 ticket at the minimum price of INR 31,232 which is more than even 10 times the minimum price quoted by ICC.

As Viagogo themselves claim, they have sold more than 500 tickets in the last 5 days, this seems highly unlikely without the involvement of ICC being involved in such a big scam happening openly.

Why is the ICC sleeping?#ChampionsTrophy2025 #indvspak #indiavspakistan pic.twitter.com/mAqWHhPBAG

— Cricket Addictor (@AddictorCricket) February 12, 2025

The irony is that the ICC has its anti-corruption unit which keeps a check on irregular financial activities within the sport and with such an open black marketing and ticket hoarding taking place, the anti-corruption unit acts as a mute spectator.

In the end, it's the fans who have to bear the brunt of this mismanagement and corruption within the ICC and this will never allow Cricket to become a Global sport, a dream envisioned (Or At Least Sold) by all ICC officials time and again.