Grand Slam tickets exceeding 25 times their face value

It's the hottest ticket in town and almost certainly the most expensive ever in a sporting context. Tickets for Ireland's Grand Slam Six Nations Championship showdown with England at Lansdowne Road on Sunday are changing hands for astronomical prices and there is no shortage of money chasing the prized commodities.

National newspapers, rugby magazines and websites have all sported advertisements offering to pay top dollar.

On one particular English-based website it promised between £1,015-£1,200 per ticket. Corporate interest is even more acute, one firm reputedly having paid €38,000 for 10 stand tickets.

The IRFU frowns on the black market economy - they are not supposed to be sold for more than the printed price - but unless complaints are made there is little hope of tracking tickets that for this game will go for in excess of 25 times their face value of €57.

On the ticket theme, it appears that Biarritz won't be burdened by expectation when they arrive at Lansdowne Road on April 12th for their Heineken European Cup quarter-final against Leinster. Initially allocated 1,800 tickets for the game, and informed that they could have more if required, they returned 1,600 of them.

This means including the travelling party including and club officials they will have less than 300 supporters at the game.

Leinster are delighted with the news because they had long since broken the 40,000 tickets sold mark for the match.

The tickets returned included 1,000 stand ones, seating tickets previously long since sold out and 600 for the East Terrace.

These tickets have gone on sale at the 20 approved retail outlets around Dublin but won't be available on line. The expectation now is that the match will be a 49,000 sell-out.

Viewing figures on RTÉ for Sunday's match at Lansdowne Road are expected to exceed the previous record for a rugby match.

The average figures for an international match would be between 550,000 and 700,000 according to RTÉ producer John D O'Brien. "We would expect to have an audience in excess of one million viewers."

It would still be some way behind the sports record for the national broadcaster: 1.9 million viewers watched the Republic of Ireland soccer team play Italy in the 1990 World Cup quarter-final.

The game, which has a 2 p.m. kick-off, will be screened on Network 2 with the programme including an hour's build-up to the game. RTÉ are considering a change to their evening scheduling that night if Ireland win the Grand Slam.