Aldridge displays some commercial Kop on with Irish ticketing venture

Former Liverpool and Ireland soccer player to launch new sports ticketing website

Liverpool football club officially launches its new merchandising store in Dublin's Ilac Centre today. Rather amusingly, it is two doors down from a jeweller called Milano, the city that dashed their hopes of a sixth European title in 2007. Ho hum.

The new store is not the only LFC-inspired new business preparing to launch in Ireland, however. John Aldridge, the Scouse-born former Liverpool and Ireland legend, has teamed up with his friend Pat McBride, an Offaly builder, to launch a new sports ticketing website.

The two are directors of Dublin- registered myfacevalue.co, due to launch this month. McBride says it is a platform for sports fans to trade tickets “at face value”. Membership of the service will costs £1 sterling a month.

The site brings the buyers and sellers together, and then leaves them to organise the transaction between themselves. MyFaceValue has a reporting function to shop users who charge higher than face value, although it doesn’t sound like a terribly stringent control mechanism.

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Still, the service may attract many users fed up of being lambasted with high charges on other ticket reseller sites such as Viagogo.

McBride says Aldridge will use his Twitter profile to garner publicity. He also says former LFC players including John Barnes, Robbie Fowler, Jason McAteer and Didi Hamman will "lend a hand" to get it off the ground.

It has ticket sections for several sports, but is initially aimed at LFC fans.

McBride says he also may promote it to fans of LFC’s biggest rival, Man United.

That sounds like a recipe for red mist.