Yahoo Finance SportSG considering stricter penalties for those who on-sell booking slots of its facilities
SINGAPORE — Sport Singapore (SportSG) is considering to impose stricter penalties against ActiveSG members who on-sell online bookings of the sports governing body’s facilities for profit.
In a media statement on Friday (5 February), SportSG said that penalties could include increasing suspensions and permanently barring the members and their accomplices from booking all public facilities.
It has already stepped up on-site enforcement measures, with hirers of the courts required to be present during the reserved time slots, or face cancellation of the booking.
“On-selling is absolutely prohibited, and no one should be procuring public sports facilities from such on-sellers,” said Sng Hock Lin, chief of ActiveSG.
“If we have evidence of on-selling of facilities, we will cancel the bookings, and in these circumstances, the paying customers of on-sellers may also find that they will not be allowed to play when they show up at the sport centres.
“We therefore strongly encourage genuine enthusiasts not to purchase bookings from such on-sellers.”
255 accounts of on-selling members suspended
The move comes about following a recent series of reports in The Straits Times which documented the on-selling practice in sports such as badminton, tennis and football.
On-sellers used software scripts to book the facilities and selling the slots at premium prices, frustrating many members of the public who could not managed to reserve slots for their recreation.
Sng said some of the errant members have gone further, in encouraging others to “lend” their accounts to them for such on-selling purposes.
He added that SportSG has been monitoring the accounts of such on-sellers, and had suspended 255 of such accounts.
“Such behaviour is wrong, and deprives other ActiveSG members who genuinely want to play sports at our facilities at affordable prices,” he said in the media statement.
“To further deter such practices, we will also regularly deploy counter measures, in the appropriate cases.
“As such measures could also adversely affect the convenience and ease of bookings for the genuine majority of members, we deploy them judiciously, but will step up enforcement if these practices go unabated.”
Interest groups established for ActiveSG members
Sng added that ActiveSG will continue to establish interest groups where members can play with the same regularity as they used to.
Members are encouraged to contact SportSG at sport_qsm@sport.gov.sg if they become aware of specific instances of other members engaging in scripting to profit from the system.
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