Tickexchange Operations Director Joe Sillett

Supporters who thought they were about to lose all their money from tickets they purchased before the draw for the Finals of Euro 2000 have been thrown a lifeline by a website launched recently.

Euro 2000 put 400,000 tickets on sale over the internet last June but fans who purchased them had no idea which game they had bought tickets for until the draw was made in December.

Not only were fans blindly buying tickets, but they had to specify who the tickets were for. The names of the people who would be attending the games would then be printed on the tickets and only they could go to the matches.

Euro 2000 has issued numerous warnings to the effect that any fan who did not have identification that matched the name on the ticket would be turned away from the game. It claimed that every single person will have their ticket checked as they passed through the turnstiles.

This left scores of fans with tickets for matches they did not want to go to, for matches in different countries on the same day, for matches on at the same time and for games they could no longer go to for some reason. Despite attempts to swap, give away, sell or even donate the tickets to charity, Euro 2000 refused to budge.

But Tickexchange.com has been launched to give fans the chance to either buy, sell or exchange their tickets through their website for a small service charge.

Any fears that fans may have that the tickets they exchange will not be valid following scaremongering from Euro 2000 have been allayed by comments made by tournament director Alain Courtois. He said: 'It's clear that not everyone will be checked, that wouldn't be realistic.

'Only those who are behaving in a provocative manner or who look suspicious will be checked. We are not out to stop someone who has legitimately bought a ticket from, for instance, a sick friend from attending matches, only those who are only there to cause trouble.'

The way it works is that any fan can register on the site and give details of the tickets they have to offer and, if they want to exhchange, which game they would prefer to go to.

Tickexchange have also made it clear that they are not a glorified ticket tout, as the tickets can only change hands at face value, and all tickets can be tracked if anybody who has gone through their system causes any trouble. But the site does insist that they cannot guarantee entry to the game once a deal has taken place between two fans.

Joe Sillett (pictured above), Operations Director of Tickexchange, said: 'Euro 2000 has said that it will be taking steps to check people's tickets, but we are confident that will not happen on a large scale.'

The site came from an idea in December last year after the draw was made. Joe and four of his friends were on holiday in Dublin when they discovered which games their tickets were for. He continued: 'We had tickets for Yugoslavia-Slovenia and Spain-Norway. Obviously they weren't the games we wanted to go to.

'We had spent £500 on five pairs of tickets for the games and didn't want to spend that kind of money on games we didn't want to go to.

'Euro 2000 had put tickets on sale when nobody knew what they were buying.

'That gave us the idea to start up a website where people who had tickets for games they didn't want could get in touch with fans in the same position and swap tickets.

'Our site lets fans come to us, tell us what tickets they want to get rid of, and then we can act as a mediator between two parties to make sure the transaction goes through correctly. But we are not acting as a ticket agent.

'We then send tickets out by registered post, or by Federal Express in Europe, to the fans' addresses. We can even send the tickets to a hotel in Holland or Belgium if that's were the fans want them to be sent.'

Although there is still an element of risk in swapping your tickets with another fan, if you could not go to the game you were originally allocated tickets for you are not going to lose anything.

You can see where Euro 2000 was coming from. It did not want fans paying ridiulous prices for tickets from touts, nor did it want tickets getting into the hands of thugs.

But, without any flexibility, there was always going to be big problems. If everybody stuck to Euro 2000's rules, there would certainly be scores of needlessly empty seats at games. All of which, of course, Euro 2000 has already sold and pocketed - and most probably spent - the money from earlier sales.

Tickexchange will continue after the end of Euro 2000 for other major sportng events due to the success of the scheme for this summer's showpiece.