Touts make Chelsea the most profitable tickets in town

When all 157,000 tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show sold out in record time on 14 May, the Royal Horticultural Society said the demand pointed to a boom in interest in gardening. For gardeners who were disappointed at being unable to buy tickets, however, the reality is a little less glamorous.

Scores of Chelsea tickets have been snapped up by touts and are being sold at eye-watering mark-ups on internet auction site ebay.
One pair of tickets for Chelsea’s opening day, Tuesday 25 May, were up for grabs on ebay for £199, despite being sold by the RHS for £49 each.

In hot demand were tickets for Saturday 29 May – the final day of Chelsea – when the show is broken down and the only day when visitors can actually buy the spectacular blooms staged by the world’s leading growers. One ebay seller was demanding £185 for a pair of Saturday all-day Chelsea tickets, originally sold by the RHS for £33 each.

RHS shows director Stephen Bennett said: “Profiteering from Chelsea tickets makes us extremely uncomfortable – but it’s impossible to stop it. We would urge internet users to exercise extreme caution and make sure that any tickets they’ve bought are not fraudulent. If tickets aren’t genuine, the holders will not be admitted to Chelsea – even if they have paid ridiculously high prices on ebay. We are, however, happy for people who bought Chelsea tickets and cannot make it to the show to give them to friends and family, or sell them at face-value.”

As Amateur Gardening went to press, a pair of tickets put up for auction with a starting price of 99 pence sold for £138 as gardeners jostled for the chance to go to Chelsea. An RHS source said: “It just goes to show that Chelsea really is the hottest ticket in town.”
The RHS advised anyone disappointed at not being able to get Chelsea tickets to buy tickets in advance for Hampton Court (6-11 July) instead.