Penalties Before Play: The Criminalisation of the Ticketless Fan

The Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Act 2026 is a modest piece of legislation with an ambitious premise. It creates a new criminal offence of entering, or attempting to enter, a designated football match without a valid ticket. Next month, the first person to be prosecuted under the new legislation will appear before Willesden Magistrates’ Court.

The reform is directed at the Baroness Casey Review’s conclusion that existing sanctions for so-called “tailgating” were insufficient[1], following the disorder which surrounded the European Championship final at Wembley in July 2021[2].

On its face, the legislation is relatively uncontroversial; unauthorised entry is plainly objectionable. The risks posed by uncontrolled access to large-scale sporting events are obvious and the decision to criminalise such conduct appears to be an easy one. The difficulty lies not in the purpose, but in the focus of responsibility.

With ticket prices soaring, a whole class of fan is being priced out of certain matches. Setting to one side those intent on hooliganism, the rise in tailgating may also owe something to continual price hikes. If so, calls for an independent regulator to have a role in setting ticket prices may have some merit. The Football Governance Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 21 July 2025 and empowers the Independent Football Regulator to engage with fans on ‘relevant matters’ including match-day ticket pricing. However, this statute stops well short of conferring any power to prohibit dynamic pricing or cap ticket prices. The regulator’s role is simply limited to ensuring that supporters are heard, not that ticket prices are restrained. Whether such a model can address the underlying drivers of exclusion is open to question.

If ticket prices are indeed contributing to unauthorised entry, sceptics may also wonder how effective a tool the new legislation will be in addressing the principal issue, targeting as it does one rogue tailgater at a time. Might time, energy and legislative muscle be better directed at ensuring clubs and stadiums invest sufficiently in systems to eliminate the practice altogether?

Existing Crowd Management Legislation

It may be that the problem is not a lack of legislation but the efficacy of it. The management of football crowds has never been left to chance. Long before the 2026 Act, Parliament had constructed a detailed regulatory framework designed to prevent precisely the kind of breakdown seen at Wembley. The Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 and the Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sport Act 1987 require stadium operators to obtain safety certificates imposing legally enforceable conditions on capacity, entry, and crowd control. Those obligations are reinforced by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which places a positive duty on those in control of premises to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the safety of those affected by their operations. These are not passive obligations. They require planning, supervision, and the active management of ingress and egress. They are directed not merely at responding to risk, but at preventing it from arising.

As the House of Lords confirmed in R v Chargot Ltd & Others[3], the statutory duty is framed by reference to “a result which the employer must achieve or prevent”[4] and is concerned with that result “not [with] any particular means of achieving it”[5]. Criminal liability in this context is therefore concerned with whether a dangerous situation has been prevented, not simply with the harm that follows from it. The law already demands that such risks be anticipated and controlled.

The events at Wembley therefore do not sit easily as an example of legislative insufficiency. They are better understood as a failure of systems: a failure to enforce existing obligations, to maintain effective barriers, and to manage predictable pressures at the point of entry.

The central learnings from the Hillsborough disaster focussed on fundamental failings in planning, policing, and stadium safety that led to the fatal crush. More than 30 years after that tragedy, the Casey Review itself concluded that the arrival of large numbers of ticketless fans at the 2021 European Championship final was foreseeable, and that many of the events that unfolded on the day were predictable. The problem was not that the law lacked tools. It was that those tools were not effectively deployed.

The New Offence: A Shift in Responsibility

The 2026 Act does not seek to strengthen those systems. It does not impose new duties on stadium operators, nor does it recalibrate the regulatory framework governing crowd safety. Instead, it shifts the focus of the criminal law. Responsibility is relocated from those under a legal duty to prevent the risk, to those who exploit its existence. That shift is subtle, but it is profound. The offence is complete upon entry, or attempted entry, without a valid ticket. Disorder need not follow. No further conduct is required. Liability attaches simply at the point of presence.

In doing so, the Act sits uneasily alongside the broader structure of football regulation. Existing offences under the Football (Offences) Act 1991 are concerned with behaviour; acts which are in themselves disruptive or harmful. The new offence departs from that model. It does not regulate what a person does, but the fact that they are there at all.

The Consequences of Conviction

The consequences of that shift are significant. The threshold for criminalisation has been lowered but the stakes remain high. A conviction carries with it a criminal record and the risk of a substantial fine. It remains to be seen how CPS Guidance will be updated to take account of this new offence, but at present it dictates that “Simple Cautions or Penalty Notices for Disorder will rarely be appropriate for football-related offences”.

However, it is a separate aspect of the penalty that seems to be the true driving force behind the new legislation. The opening words of the statutory provision hint at its reason for being: “an Act to create an offence of unauthorised entry at football matches for which a football banning order can be imposed following conviction”.

Historically Football Banning Orders had been reserved for those engaging in violence and disorder at matches. Now they can attach to anyone attempting to enter a ground without a ticket, even if that attempt is unsuccessful.

The effect of these orders are severe and can be wide ranging. Following conviction, and in cases not involving a custodial sentence, Football Banning Orders may be imposed for up to five years, with a statutory minimum of three years. They can restrict attendance at matches, limit travel, and, in some cases, even require the surrender of passports during times when the national team is playing abroad. Taking an optimistic view of England’s prospects at the 2026 World Cup, that could see fans who fall foul of the new law unable to travel for any reason (football related or otherwise) for over a month this summer.

What’s more, their use is widespread and strongly encouraged by prosecutorial and sentencing guidance. This gives rise to a proportionality concern. The same preventive sanction may follow from public disorder at one end of the spectrum, and from unauthorised entry, potentially no more than misjudgement at the other.

Fairness and Efficiency: Where Should Responsibility Lie?

There is also a broader public interest question. If the law already places a clear duty on stadium operators to control access and manage risk, is it desirable to shift liability onto the individual for the failure of those systems? The point is not that those who force entry should escape sanction. It is that the law has, until now, located primary responsibility with those best placed to prevent the risk from arising. That allocation reflects both practicality and principle.

Operators control the infrastructure, the staffing, and the systems of entry. They are, in a meaningful sense, responsible for the environment in which such risks materialise. The 2026 Act does not remove those duties, but it alters their context. By criminalising entry, it risks obscuring the extent to which such conduct is made possible by failures of control. The focus shifts from prevention to reaction and from systems to individuals.

Secondary Ticket Markets

That shift is particularly difficult to justify when the wider regulatory landscape is considered. Unauthorised access is often facilitated by the operation of secondary ticketing markets. Parliament has long legislated in this area. s.166 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 criminalises unauthorised resale of tickets to a designated football match, yet enforcement remains inconsistent, particularly in relation to large online platforms.

Football, in this respect, occupies an anomalous position. The resale of tickets for other major events is generally governed by contract rather than criminal law. At Wimbledon, for example, the resale of non-transferable tickets constitutes a breach of terms and conditions, exposing the purchaser to the risk of refusal of entry, but not to criminal sanction. Debenture holders, by contrast, may lawfully resell tickets at a profit. Enforcement, where it occurs, is often piecemeal. In All England Lawn Tennis Club v Oliver Hardiman, the High Court imposed a custodial sentence for contempt following breach of an injunction restraining unlawful resale. The broader market, however, remains largely intact.

Defences

Indeed, the Act is unlikely to impact the secondary ticket market in itself.

It creates two defences to the new charge. The first is proving lawful authority or lawful excuse for the attempted entry (section 1(1A)(2)). The explanatory notes envision that this is likely to include, for example, employees, journalists and emergency workers.

The second is for the defendant to prove (on the balance of probabilities[6]) that they attempted to enter via the normal spectator entrance and had something that they “reasonably believed was a match ticket for the match” but which was not (section 1(1A)(3)(c)(i)), or which was a ticket for that match, but which they were not eligible to use (section 1(1A)(3)(c)(ii))). The Government’s Explanatory Notes to the Bill for this Act emphasise “The Bill is not about villainising football fans, and this defence acknowledges that fans are sadly sometimes duped by unscrupulous ticket fraudsters”.

Interestingly, the Explanatory Notes are clear that the second defence also applies in relation to a person using a genuine ticket that they are not eligible to use, for example, an adult using a child’s ticket. This defence would appear to apply even where the misuse of the ticket was deliberate. As per those notes and Lord Brennan’s remarks in the House of Commons Second Reading, “that is because there would already be a reserved seat in the stadium and safety would not be an issue with respect to overcrowding”.

Those facing investigation or prosecution would be wise to seek legal advice. Early written representations may avoid prosecution. For those cases that do proceed to court, application of the statutory defences is not necessarily straightforward. Expert legal representation is likely to be vital in defending the charge or avoiding a lengthy Football Banning Orders at sentence.

Conclusion

Lines of defence aside, the effect of the new Act is a system in which the conditions that give rise to “tailgating” persist, while the consequences of those conditions are more readily criminalised. The law intervenes most decisively at the point where the individual is visible, rather than where the underlying problem originates.

Of course, none of this reduces the seriousness of what occurred at Wembley in 2021. The loss of control at a major sporting event presents obvious and significant risks but the legislative response does something more than address those risks. It redistributes responsibility for them. The Act does not fill a gap in the law. It recasts an enforcement failure as an individual offence, lowers the threshold at which criminal liability attaches, and extends a powerful preventive regime to conduct that may arguably fall far short of disorder.

In doing so, it raises a question which extends beyond football. Where a risk is foreseeable, and where the law already imposes a duty to prevent it, is it better to strengthen that duty, or to punish those who encounter its failure?

The answer in football, it seems, is to let the fan take the penalty before play has even begun.

[1] “Tailgating, for example, should become a criminal offence. Sanctions for those breaking into football stadiums and/ or recklessly endangering lives is weak.” p.125; Baroness Casey Review

[2] “Independent analysis of CCTV footage by Jason Moseley, specialist investigator, on behalf of the Review, indicates that between 1,776 and 1,964 people gained entry to Wembley, either through tailgating or taking part in a mass breach” p.46, Baroness Casey Review

[3]  R v Chargot Ltd & Others (t/a Contract Services) and others [2008] UKHL 73

[4] Chargot [17]

[5] Chargot [18]

[6] As per the Government’s Explanatory Notes to the Bill for this Act