Man Utd fan, 6, has season ticket restricted by club as fans left furious

Manchester United have restricted a six-year-old fan's season ticket as part of their attempts to identify ticket touts.

Ahead of the new season, United officials have been attempting to crack down on ticket touts and potential breaches of the club's ticketing terms and conditions.

Fans have been posting on social media that they have received emails from the club after their season ticket account was flagged.

According to The Guardian, United contacted fans who used six or more devices to access accounts linked to the club or had forwarded tickets to non-members.

The affected fans have been asked to submit evidence to the club if they feel they have been wrongly accused - which many fans say they have been.

Fans have been left furious that restrictions have been applied by United before season ticket holders have had the opportunity to explain themselves.

A joint statement from United supporters' groups agreed that 'robust action' must be taken in cases of professional touting and automated purchasing, but said such action 'must be fair, proportionate and transparent'.

"Longstanding supporters who have followed Manchester United for decades, often across multiple generations of the same family, should never feel they are being treated as suspects without clear evidence, due process or a meaningful opportunity to respond to the allegations made against them," the joint statement reads.

"The current approach has created a growing perception among supporters of 'ban first and ask questions later'."

The saga has piled yet more pressure on United minority co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who was heavily criticised after deciding to raise matchday ticket prices to £66 midway through the 2024/25 season.

United minority co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe is unpopular among sections of the club's supporters (Image: Getty)

On social media, a Manchester United fan named Katie Ryan says that she received an email that the club had restricted the season ticket belonging to her son Ruairi, 6.

She wrote that the reason for the restriction is because she had logged in to his account, and means he can't apply for tickets to watch the opening away game of the Premier League season against Hull City.

"I can't even tell him because it will break his heart!" she wrote. "If they checked my Insta all season they would see he rarely missed a game!"

The email's contents, as reported by the BBC, stated that there had been repeated access to Ruairi's season ticket account, alongside an 'extremely high' number of other ticketing accounts, which both indicated they had been centrally controlled.

It said it had not accused any 'wrongdoing', but stated that the 'scale, frequency and pattern' of the wider activity had not been satisfactorily explained and concluded that the account of her son had been put under another person's control.

Katie explained to The Independent that she had access to 11 accounts, all belonging to family and friends, and who all sit in the same section of Old Trafford.

Her appeal is said to have challenged restrictions on six family accounts, with the club rejecting her initial appeal after just four hours in what she believed was an automatic response.

She told the club in her second appeal that 'no tickets had been sold for profit, advertised or supplied to unauthorised third parties, and no automated software, bots or scripts had been used', and that she had used United's official system to forward tickets when family members were unable to attend.

The club are said to have previously expressed confidence that the 'vast majority' of accounts identified had been correctly flagged, but acknowledged some of those could have been done in error.

SPORTbible have contacted Manchester United for comment but are yet to receive a response.