From the Sunday Times 14th November 2010 .........

Everyone's favourite subject ....... TOUTS !!

AT F***ING LAST, some form of vaguely meaningful recognition that this entire "secondary market" phenomenon has spiralled completely out of control. It is riddled with deceptive practice, blatant lies, and now fully deserves to be even more thoroughly investigated, dismantled, and legislated against. I hope it happens & that I live long enough to see GETMEIN, SEATWAVE, VIAGOGO, DOUBLE8TICKETS and their like go to the wall. Good on the Sunday Times for this article.


Ticket giants help touts make a killing at the box office back door

Seats at a Help for Heroes concert with Robbie Williams were offered on a website used by touts — owned by the firm running the official box office

Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Lisa Verrico
Published: 14 November 2010

‘The decks are stacked against ordinary fans’ as touts cash in

Organisers of top music and sporting events are ramping up prices by releasing tickets on websites used by touts instead of selling them through their own box offices.

A Sunday Times investigation has found that the market has been inflated at Madonna concerts and at this month’s ATP World Tour tennis finals in London because tickets have been channelled to sites used by the touts.

Official box office operators are also endorsing the resale of tickets. Seats at a Help for Heroes concert with Robbie Williams in September were offered on a website used by touts — owned by the firm running the official box office for the charity event.

Industry sources estimated that the official endorsement of ticket touting means as many as one in five tickets ends up on tout websites and is resold at an average mark-up of 60%. At many events the best seats are never even offered at the official box office.

Even the head of the touts’ trade body admitted that the system was in crisis and needed new rules to protect the public. Graham Burns, chairman of the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents, said: “The decks are stacked against the ordinary fan.”

The direct supply of tickets to websites used by touts is one of several practices that has transformed the black market in tickets into a £500m-a-year industry.

A Sunday Times investigation has also found:

• The ATP tennis world tour finals recommends that fans buy seats from a website used by touts which it supplies with premium tickets. Two tickets for the final on November 28 with a face value of £180 are being offered for sale on the site, Viagogo, at £1,699.70 this weekend.

• Ticketmaster, the biggest official online box office, directs customers who fail to find tickets to its own resale website, Get Me In!, which is used by fans and touts. Seats at concerts by Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue are being offered for sale on the site at £900 each — more than 10 times the face value.

• Fans who spend hours trying to buy popular tickets on official websites compete with professional touts with access to software that can snap up the best tickets in fractions of a second.

• The government last year rejected demands to outlaw ticket touting — known as secondary ticket sales — despite being warned by the industry that the internet was threatening to turn it into an “uncontrollable juggernaut”.

Some music promoters and sporting organisers, frustrated at seeing touts make large profits on tickets, are now endorsing some sites — and supplying tickets — to maximise their revenues.

In Madonna’s 2009 tour her concert promoters directly supplied the Viagogo site with premium tickets and endorsed the site for the sale of tickets above the face value.

The London 2012 Olympic Games has outlawed the resale of tickets on secondary markets. There will be an exchange where tickets can be traded at face value.
The ATP said that only a “small number of the total capacity” of tickets for its world tour finals were being supplied to Viagogo for sale.

‘The decks are stacked against ordinary fans’ as touts cash in

Official box office agents are passing top tickets to websites that then ramp up prices as fans struggle to get them for face value

Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Lisa Verrico
Published: 14 November 2010

When Debbie Anderton, 46, sat down at her computer screen last month to buy tickets for next year’s Take That reunion tour, she hoped to snap up a couple of seats at one of the Manchester concerts.

She spent days searching websites and vainly trying to enter her details. Eventually, she gave up trying to buy tickets on Ticketmaster, the official online box office, and bought a pair on eBay for £180 — £60 above their face value.

Anderton, from Prestatyn, north Wales, said: “My computer just kept going back to a blank screen or to a dial-up queue. I did go as far as choosing tickets once, but I never got as far as the pay screen.”

The ticket touts had no such problems. Within moments of the Take That tickets going on sale, they had obtained a supply and were offering them on unofficial sites at inflated prices.

Thousands of customers for other events also face forking out extra cash for tickets they struggle to buy at the official online agencies. This weekend some trying to buy tickets for Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue tours on Ticketmaster were directed to Get Me In!, a trading platform popular with fans and ticket touts.

Get Me In!, which was bought by Ticketmaster in January 2008, gets 25% of the price of the tickets sold on the website.

The prices can be high. On the Get Me In! site this weekend, the cheapest offer for the Lady Gaga concert at the O2 arena on Friday, December 17, was £110 for tickets with a face value of £56.25. The most expensive was £1,296.90 for tickets with a face value of £75.

Two premium tickets for Minogue’s concert at the O2 in London on April 9 were on sale on Get Me In! this weekend for £2,584.91, including a processing fee of £387.11. The face value of the tickets is £130.

Yesterday Ticketmaster justified its role in the website by saying: “One of its core responsibilities is to offer as many genuine fans as possible the opportunity to buy tickets to [an] event.” The company says it enforces measures to ensure “consumers are protected”.

Although the resale of tickets is not illegal, even operators in the so-called secondary market think the public is being exploited. Graham Burns, chairman of the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents, said: “The ordinary fan is screwed. The decks are stacked against them.”

One of the key reasons the resale of tickets is flourishing, according to Burns, is that ticket tout operators are obtaining some prime tickets on a routine basis from concert promoters, venue operators and music managers.

The Sunday Times found no evidence that this has occurred with Take That concerts. Burns claimed, however, that some tickets for some events are never offered to fans at their face value.

“Try and buy a front-row seat at a bestselling concert face value. It can’t be done. They will have gone out the back door or already been sold to the secondary market,” he said.

Even charity tickets are being resold on Get Me In!. Ticketmaster was the official online box office for the Help for Heroes charity concert at Twickenham in September, featuring Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow of Take That, as well as Tom Jones. The tickets it sold clearly stated on the back they were “not for resale”.

The same tickets, however, were put up for sale on Get Me In! at an average price of £106. The face value of the tickets ranged from £46.75 to £80.

Ticketmaster said that the Help for Heroes tickets were marked “not for resale” by the event’s organiser and that this did not legally prevent fans selling them on Get Me In!. Therefore the company saw no reason to prohibit such sales. Ticketmaster added that it gave a proportion of its fees to the Help for Heroes charity.

Ticketmaster insists it never provides tickets directly to Get Me In!, but does promote the company on its website to fans unable to buy tickets at face value.

Rivals are not convinced. Rob Wilmshurst, chief operating officer at See Tickets, another online agency that sells about 9m tickets a year, said: “I don’t see how Ticketmaster can be poacher and gamekeeper.”

Some recording artists and sporting event organisers are also embracing the secondary market websites. Before Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009, tickets for his comeback tour were allegedly offered by the promoter on the secondary market for £500, compared with a face value of between £50 and £75.

For Madonna’s Sticky and Sweet concerts in London and Manchester last year, premium tickets were supplied to Viagogo, one of the largest secondary ticket sites, where they were offered for up to £600 each. The singer’s promoters endorsed the site.

It is not just the music industry that is embracing the secondary market. Some of the best tickets for the ATP tennis world tour finals at the O2 later this month are being resold by Viagogo.

The official site for the tournament directs fans to the Viagogo website where tickets with a face value of £90 are being offered for £250. The most expensive tickets are being offered for sale at £849.85 each.

Eric Baker, the founder of Viagogo, insists his site has helped legitimise the resale of tickets and provide an open and secure marketplace. “Tout is a very charged term,” Baker has said. “People have to understand we’re a solution to touts.”

Viagogo says about half of the tickets on the site are sold for less than face value. Fans are also charged processing fees, however.

Touting prices real fans out of being able to attend sporting events

Event organisers could stop exorbitant prices if they chose to do so.

Manchester United uses Viagogo as an authorised trading platform for its season ticket holders to sell tickets to matches they cannot attend. The club imposes strict limits on the prices that can be charged, however.

Other promoters produce tickets that cannot be resold. At this year’s Ryder Cup in Wales, tickets had the buyer’s photograph printed on the front. The Glastonbury music festival also issues tickets with photographs to stop them being resold.

In some cases, legislation prevents reselling. It will be illegal to offer tickets for the 2012 London Olympics for resale at inflated prices. Touts are also outlawed from selling football tickets.

Rob Ballantine, of the Concert Promoters Association, believes similar laws are required to protect fans at other events from being overcharged.

“This is not a supply and demand market,” he said. “We don’t put concerts into big halls and then see how many turn up. We try to sell out every concert so the atmosphere is great and try to leave demand outside.”

That creates a secondary market for tickets. If tickets are then allowed to be resold at inflated prices, promoters and artists will inevitably be tempted to cash in, Ballantine believes.

He predicts more and more artists will ask their promoters to provide tickets direct to the lucrative secondary market.

The Concert Promoters Association gave evidence to a Commons select committee inquiry in 2007 and to an investigation by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport last year, warning of an “explosion” in ticket prices unless controls were put in place.

CCPR, the national alliance of governing bodies of sport and recreation, also gave evidence to the culture department’s investigation. It said: “Ticket prices are set to enable [genuine fans] to afford them. They are not set to maximise revenue.

“Touting operations make big profits by buying up as many tickets as possible and then ruthlessly taking advantage of the passion people have for sport by reselling them at greatly inflated prices.

“Touting prices real fans out of being able to attend sporting events.”

CCPR cited an Office of Fair Trading inquiry that found fans often suffered when buying tickets from touts.

Some of the practices included failing to supply the tickets, not disclosing the face value of the ticket and selling seats with restricted views without informing the buyer.

Ministers and the select committee rejected the arguments, concluding that fans wanted a forum for exchanging tickets. It was effectively a green light for the touts.

Critics, however, argue it is unfair that tickets are handed to the secondary market without their face value being disclosed.

One of the most notorious operators in recent years was the tout Michael Rangos. He operated a site in central London, Ticket Tout, which was shut down in 2007 with debts of more than £5m. The government’s Insolvency Service said Rangos’s company regularly failed to deliver tickets and “grossly overcharged for them”. Rangos has been struck off as a director.

Some MPs believe ticket touting should be investigated again. Sharon Hodgson, Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West, has tabled a private member’s bill aimed at clamping down on the secondary market.

“What I want is legislation that makes it a criminal offence to buy up large numbers of tickets, with a view to selling them at a profit,” she said.

Touts and the secondary market industry claim this is a recipe for half-empty venues because the resale of tickets — at below as well as at face value — helps sell out events.

Ticketmaster said Get Me In! provided a guarantee to consumers that they would receive the tickets they purchased. It said websites such as Get Me In! also provide a means for fans to judge the broad level of prices for secondary tickets.

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

Read that yesterday. Good article. Ticketmaster and artists/promoters siphoning off their best seats to touts? Who'd have guessed.

... offered on a website used by touts — owned by the firm running the official box office ...

I've read these things before and every time I hope it's not true. But we all know that it happens. I still think it is a scandal.

-------------------
Keep On Rolling

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Gazza
Read that yesterday. Good article. Ticketmaster and artists/promoters siphoning off their best seats to touts? Who'd have guessed.

Exactly, it just confirms that they are in fact doing everything that anyone with half a cell between the ears always suspected they might be. I like this particular finding of the investigation:

<<< Some of the practices included failing to supply the tickets, not disclosing the face value of the ticket and selling seats with restricted views without informing the buyer >>>

Ever bought a ticket off Seatwave ? Try it, especially if you're genuinely interested, but just wish to know the seat number - more than likely because you're familiar with the venue layout and are understandably picky about where you sit ? Well Seatwave don't divulge seat numbers, and the bullshit reasons they come up with for not doing so absolutely beggar belief. They will claim among other things it protects the privacy of the vendor, and all sorts of other crap. What they actually fail to tell you is that the one real reason they don't reveal seat numbers is that seats on the very outside of front blocks are actually not very good and hardly worth the money, because you don't have a worthwhile overall view. You might be close to the stage, but you're hanging right off one end of it. Revealing the seat number would give the game away, the ticket might not shift for the inevitably stupid price that's being asked for it.

The whole thing is shite, 'bout time it was dismantled and outlawed.

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

They shouldn't outlaw reselling tickets per se as that would stop people from selling a ticket that didn't want but what they should do is outlaw tickets from being resold above the price originally paid for the ticket.

Scalpers and touts are almost in the same category as loan sharks in my book.

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Father Ted
They shouldn't outlaw reselling tickets per se as that would stop people from selling a ticket that didn't want but what they should do is outlaw tickets from being resold above the price originally paid for the ticket.

Scalpers and touts are almost in the same category as loan sharks in my book.

Correct. It just needs a little bit of thought, but to date no-one has bothered to find the time or enthusiasm to give it that little bit of thought. Now that of course it's escalated into this supposed £500m a year business or whatever the figure in the article was, it's a case of "wakey wakey, you've ignored the problem and now it's grown into a monster" !!

You're absolutely right, you can't and you shouldn't legislate against re-selling a ticket per se, but it's the PRICE inflation factor that is the problem. That is something you CAN legislate against, and it's bleedin' obvious it NEEDS to be done.

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

The administration fee charge that came in about 20 years gets me equally angry. If you buy a say, £60 concert ticket you are usually charge an exhorbitant extra fee of about £6. This they call an administration charge. What justification is there for this? Ticket agencies are in the business to sell tickets pure and simple - what extra admin fee do they need to charge?

It's the same as if your local supermarket decided to charge you an extra fee for having to employ a cashier at the till.

The quicker the law tightens up against these roques the better. It used to be so easy just calling up the theatre and have them send you the tickets.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-11-15 17:17 by Silver Dagger.

<<Eric Baker, the founder of Viagogo, insists his site has helped legitimise the resale of tickets and provide an open and secure marketplace. “Tout is a very charged term,” Baker has said. “People have to understand we’re a solution to touts.”>>

A solution to touts?! What are they BUT touts themselves?!

<<Ticketmaster said Get Me In! provided a guarantee to consumers that they would receive the tickets they purchased.>>

What? So Ticketmaster *doesn't* guarantee to consumers they receive the tickets they purchased?

The whole thing is criminal. I guess things are much the same in the United States, but what about the rest of Europe? Are these same things allowed to happen there?

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Beast
I guess things are much the same in the United States, but what about the rest of Europe? Are these same things allowed to happen there?

Yes, things are very much the same in the States.

"what about the rest of Europe?"
no, not yet...

I would be more worried about reverse scalping next tour

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Harm
I would be more worried about reverse scalping next tour

I don't follow, what do you mean by reverse scalping ?

On a general note, the more I think about it (which for the sake of maintaining a mind at peace - I really should try not to do) the more it angers me that the situation has remained "unregulated" for so long. Consequently, bad practice and wholesome deceipt are so entrenched now, it just makes the entire job of restoring order and honest practice to the live music industry that much more difficult. Shame on the U.K. government and the Arts Council and all the other pertinent bodies or authorities that should by rights have acted on this issue many f**ing years ago.

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

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dcba
"what about the rest of Europe?"
no, not yet...

<<< no, not yet >>>

Well I hope the governments of various countries in Europe act sensibly and responsibly when and where and however necessary, in order to ultimately spare their public the indignity and frustration of what we in the U.K. regrettably have to put up with.

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

Imho scalping has become so obscene in America cos Rock'n roll is part of the Americana. After all YOU invented it.

In continental Europe try bragging around that you spent a grand for a rock show ticket and you'll find yourself institutionalized...