Thought I'd start this thread, because although I personally am sorted out with tickets for four out of the five Stones shows I'm going to in Europe this summer ............ I am still after a ticket for one particular show and hence am keeping an eye on the secondary market.

In so doing, what I notice is truly mind boggling, and it does make one realise just to what horrible extent the market for concert tickets in general is thoroughly manipulated these days, and how the term SOLD OUT actually means nothing of the sort whatsoever.

In that respect, just a few example of the state of play today 20 May:

Berlin show - situation on 20 May

255 pit tickets available, cheapest is £251 - only slightly above face value which is 224.50 EUROS

Zurich show - situation 20 May

280 pit tickets available, cheapest is £90 (significantly below face value)

Paris show - situation 20 May

113 available, cheapest is £363. The availability has increased dramatically in the last 2-3 days, but as yet the price of £363 is ridiculous, this ticket has a face value of 111.50 EUROS. Dream on all those idiots trying to offload tickets on Viagogo and Seatwave .........

The larger purpose of starting this thread is just to alert people to the fact that it's just a horrible game that has to be played out in order for you to get the ticket you want to whatever show you want. In that respect, be wise. If you suddenly see that that for example the 255 Berlin tickets currently available suddenly all but disappear overnight, and you wake up the following morning and see the number available has plummeted from 255 to 55, do not panic. It doesn't mean that 200 tickets have been bought overnight, it rather more means that 200 tickets that have never as yet been offered for sale by the primary vendor (ticketmaster.de) have simply been withdrawn from the Viagogo or Seatwave listing in order justify the remaining 55 increasing dramatically in price with the hope of getting people to panic and buy them at that price.

Moral of story, be cynical, be sceptical, be wise ........... and if you have to play the game, make sure you WIN !! F**k scalpers !!

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



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2015-11-18 15:39 by paulywaul.

He he, way to go, pauly!

And for Düsseldorf (as already mentioned by MAF in the "All sold out" forum) still tickets for 1. FOS available at Ticketmaster!
No need to feed the scalpers!

By the way: I got my second ticket for Ddorf 1.FOS slightly below face value at ebay a few days ago.

[www.ticketmaster.de]

Why not just buy them when they go on sale from the box office?

The 6 shows I'm going to, the tickets were easy to get. Well maybe not Vienna, but there were server problems, still ended up with one though.

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MingSubu
Why not just buy them when they go on sale from the box office?

The 6 shows I'm going to, the tickets were easy to get. Well maybe not Vienna, but there were server problems, still ended up with one though.

Because then you're feeding the scalpers. Mick and Keith.

Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

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treaclefingers

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MingSubu
Why not just buy them when they go on sale from the box office?

The 6 shows I'm going to, the tickets were easy to get. Well maybe not Vienna, but there were server problems, still ended up with one though.

Because then you're feeding the scalpers. Mick and Keith.

Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

Unfortunately this is truly how I felt last year at the two gigs I saw in Chicago. I really sours the whole experience when tons of people are prevented from attending because $750 x 2 = $1500 = mortgage payment.

If they really wanted to thank the fans, the tickets could have been reasonable. Scalpers can EAT IT! On that note, if the tickets don't sell, then we know why. There is plenty of interest from all sorts of folks, not just the high-income earners!

Yes PaulyWaul,

I hear you and fully concur. Unfortunately as long as there have been human beings, there has and always will be oportunistic human beings who will cynically exploit other human beings.

Not really sure what we can do to stop it but one thing is for sure - it was a huge mistake to allow Buyers to purchase 8 tickets at a time. I'm pretty sure tickets went on sale 10 minutes early too and I would not be in the least bit surprised if there was collusion between the official outlets and the touts with the latter getting a secret tip off (scalpers for US English).

Event ticketing is one of the most corrupt industries on Earth.

Hi Paulywaul - good job - guess you know that some tickets for Tel Aviv June 4th also waiting at face value for you? wrote to you an e mail about it but it might have gone to the SPAM?

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Wroclaw
Hi Paulywaul - good job - guess you know that some tickets for Tel Aviv June 4th also waiting at face value for you? wrote to you an e mail about it but it might have gone to the SPAM?

O wow,great. I'll have a rummage around in the SPAM folder then. Muchas gracias for letting me know.

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

And to prove my point, there's now (a few hours later on 20 May) a staggering 302 tickets for the golden circle in Zurich, an increase of 22 tickets over what was available a matter of a few hours ago !!

Sold Out ? Yeah right, my a** !!

What they actually mean is "shitloads withheld from legitimate sale and stuck on secondary sites in the hope people will pay silly money". And now of course, due to a somewhat grievous miscalculation, the stupid bastards are having to get rid of all those tickets they bought speculatively at below face value.

[www.viagogo.co.uk]

Meanwhile in Paris ........... there's still the same 113 for the pit available, but the price is moving downwards, now £346 (a decrease of some £17 also in a matter of hours)

Ho hum, life goes on .............

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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-05-20 19:29 by paulywaul.

And that's to say nothing of what others might be on Seatwave, Stubhub, Getmein etc

It is ridiculous! Over the past few years for various events, I've ended up spending far too much time (when I should be working) checking out secondary seller sites....

For this tour, I think there's quite a few of us here who desperately tried for Paris Pelouse VIP (and in my case, Rome pit) tickets when they went on sale - with no luck.

Me too Martha.

I actually received a link from ticketnet.fr at 8.49am but my email spammed it. Be patient though. You'll get into the SdF at a reasonable price if you really want to. Arm yourself with :

1. A Colur Seating & Floor Chart

2. A high res colour copy of a ticket so you don't get sold a dud.

The touts will cave in the end - they always do. It's brinkmanship. One thing's for certain - there will NOT be 80,000 people inside the stadium! In 2007 they tried to manipulate the market and the crowd was c. 50,000 with tickets for all sections on sale officially on the day. It will be fuller this time though.

PaulyWaul's on pricewatch on viagogo...

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MingSubu
Why not just buy them when they go on sale from the box office?

The 6 shows I'm going to, the tickets were easy to get. Well maybe not Vienna, but there were server problems, still ended up with one though.

Easier said than done.
Tried all day for Madrid, from opening time and was a fiasco.

No tix since then available apart from scalpers on here and elsewhere like viago etc.

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crawdaddy

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MingSubu
Why not just buy them when they go on sale from the box office?

The 6 shows I'm going to, the tickets were easy to get. Well maybe not Vienna, but there were server problems, still ended up with one though.

Easier said than done.
Tried all day for Madrid, from opening time and was a fiasco.

No tix since then available apart from scalpers on here and elsewhere like viago etc.

It seemed everyone was having problems for Madrid tickets. I doubt that was due to scalpers/touts. I scored a Madrid ticket late morning/early afternoon. Forget the exact time.

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grzegorz67
Me too Martha.

I actually received a link from ticketnet.fr at 8.49am but my email spammed it. Be patient though. You'll get into the SdF at a reasonable price if you really want to. Arm yourself with :

1. A Colur Seating & Floor Chart

2. A high res colour copy of a ticket so you don't get sold a dud.

The touts will cave in the end - they always do. It's brinkmanship. One thing's for certain - there will NOT be 80,000 people inside the stadium! In 2007 they tried to manipulate the market and the crowd was c. 50,000 with tickets for all sections on sale officially on the day. It will be fuller this time though.

PaulyWaul's on pricewatch on viagogo...

You bet he is ........... and on every other a**hole scalping site too. Faith people, the good will triumph in the end, we'll get what we need at the right price by the time this absurd game is fully played out. The stupid & the greedy will get screwed, & it will be largely their own doing. As I said in the thread title, may they CHOKE ON IT !!

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

Excellent work good sir and a very good thread

I hear and share your passion.

Please do keep us informed.

I'm meeting up with friends (fellow Brits) in Paris who haven't done the haggle-a-ticket-on-the-day routine before and they're wondering whether to pay over the odds for the reassurance of having tickets in their hands. I've advised against as I'm confident prices will fall. I've also got a strong suspicion that more tickets will be sold officially nearer the time to stuff it to the touts. They did just that for HP1 last year although that was a proper clusterf**k if ever there was one.

This is an industry sorely in need of reform, regulation and transparency. These touts (scalpers) have no special skills and add no value to society. They are pure parasites.

May their underpants be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels

This will be "The Nerves Of Steel Tour" for me.

I'm going to Waldbühne, Berlin without a ticket and want to score ...on the last second, if it has to be.

damn the scalpers

I fancy that show too open-g.

How do you rate the chances of scoring a ticket, given capacity is c 20,000 ?

Good job. Do the airlines work the same way? Sometimes I think so.

Paris show - situation 21 May

VIAGOGO: 112 available, cheapest is £342. Face value of this ticket is €111.50 (£91) - so they're asking nearly FOUR times the price !! F**k O** !!

[www.viagogo.co.uk]

I think we'll wait ............................. !!

SEATWAVE: 49 available, same price. I bet those are the same tickets, just listed on multiple sites.

[www.seatwave.com]

STUBHUB: cannot even be bothered to include a correct seating plan/layout sketch of the venue, so you don't actually know WHAT you'd be buying - if you're stupid enough to go through them

[www.stubhub.co.uk]

And the wait goes on ..................... ho hum !!

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

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shattered
Good job. Do the airlines work the same way? Sometimes I think so.

Airlines (the Low Cost ones and many of the veteran commercial airlines) work on a "revenue per flight" cost basis - the modern fully computerized reservation systems allow they to know in real time whats the expected revenue, including all options (flexy tickets that can be cancelled VS. "no change/no refund" tickets) as well as many other factors. Basically from their point of view the have many "channels" for the same product and many different such products. The "play" between all these in order to maximize the income. DB and OEBB (German and Austrian railways) do the same, on a smaller scale.

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paulywaul
Paris show - situation 21 May

VIAGOGO: 112 available, cheapest is £342. Face value of this ticket is €111.50 (£91) - so they're asking nearly FOUR times the price !! F**k O** !!

[www.viagogo.co.uk]

I think we'll wait ............................. !!

SEATWAVE: 49 available, same price. I bet those are the same tickets, just listed on multiple sites.

[www.seatwave.com]

STUBHUB: cannot even be bothered to include a correct seating plan/layout sketch of the venue, so you don't actually know WHAT you'd be buying - if you're stupid enough to go through them

[www.stubhub.co.uk]

And the wait goes on ..................... ho hum !!

PW,

There were loads on ebay.fr too the last time I looked. I know they're the parent of Stubhub. They were splattered all over it in the days after the original sale. Makes you sick

What are the prices like for Pelouse Or (next section back from FoS) ? I'm considering that as I get the feeling VIP isn't that big this time, With PO, you can at least get near the end of the catwalk.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, if I recall SDF from last time (2006) - they had the pitch divided into just two sections, the pelouse or and then behind the straight pelouse section. The dividing line between these two sections was already quite far behind the B-stage, in fact the whole pelouse or area was three times as big as it needed to have been for the amount of people that were in there. I don't think it would have been great for the band onstage, because basically what they looked out on would have been a smallish crowd of people huddled up at the front of the stage, either side of the catwalk and at the B-stage, and then there would have been this empty gap of a good few metres (tens of metres actually) until the barrier, behind which was the pelouse section (and which WAS jam packed).

So the setup for 2014 is that the pitch is now divided up into three sections, but I wouldn't be too sure that from the middle of those three sections (the pelouse or) you'll be able to access the catwalk and B-stage. If I were you, I'd hang on for the FOS section (pelouse VIP). Prices for the middle section (Pelouse or) are obviously much less, they appear to be starting at GBP£ 142, a couple of hundred ££££££s less than the FOS area.

Hang fire I should, those FOS ticket prices will drop, play the mother f***ers at their own game. As you said, it's just a ridiculous game of brinkmanship, and the closer to show-time we get, the greater the chance of you and I winning and all the Viagogo and seatwave fraternity losing ............. !!

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

PW,

I wasn't there in 2006 but I was there in 2007 and the arrangement you describe was kept exactly the same for 2007. FOS was far too big and I heard that tickets for it were on sale at the box office on the day for 50 EUR despite appearing to be sold out on ticketnet.fr for weeks beforehand.

FWIW, I was seated in row 8 of U6(next to the Players' tunnel) with my parents, the same age as the band, who I'd finally persuaded to come to a gig. The view and sound were excellent, despite a wobbly performance from Keith. It was the show immediately after the trainwreck of Frankfurt and thankfully Ronnie upped his game to compensate, playing a blinder. My parents thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sitting there gave me a good view of general proceedings and the crowd can't have been much more than 50,000, if that.

The thing about barriers between floor standing sections is that they are flexible and can be moved around at the last minute, depending on ticket sales.

I've also heard that some secondary sellers are owned by primary sellers. If that's true how's that for a conflict of interest ??????

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grzegorz67
PW,

I wasn't there in 2006 but I was there in 2007 and the arrangement you describe was kept exactly the same for 2007. FOS was far too big and I heard that tickets for it were on sale at the box office on the day for 50 EUR despite appearing to be sold out on ticketnet.fr for weeks beforehand.

FWIW, I was seated in row 8 of U6(next to the Players' tunnel) with my parents, the same age as the band, who I'd finally persuaded to come to a gig. The view and sound were excellent, despite a wobbly performance from Keith. It was the show immediately after the trainwreck of Frankfurt and thankfully Ronnie upped his game to compensate, playing a blinder. My parents thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sitting there gave me a good view of general proceedings and the crowd can't have been much more than 50,000, if that.

The thing about barriers between floor standing sections is that they are flexible and can be moved around at the last minute, depending on ticket sales.

I've also heard that some secondary sellers are owned by primary sellers. If that's true how's that for a conflict of interest ?

Well yes true, the whole thing is just a farce and a con, manipulated to the "nth" degree with the odds stacked monumentally against the average concert goer. There have been (as you probably know) various attempts to get government (at least the UK government) to take an interest in legislating against these runaway excesses as demonstrated by the likes of Seatwave and Viagogo and that now plague the entire entertainment industry, but they seem to be resisting getting involved, preferring to consider the current state of affairs as "entrepreneurship in action".

O I see, that's what they call it now !! Since when has been market manipulation and wilful deceit been entrepreneurial ? For f**ks sake !!

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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-05-21 18:33 by paulywaul.

I have been watching viagogo for quite some time now, seen the BBC documentary etc.

Example: when viagogo lists 255 Berlin standing tickets, as they do right now, that does not mean they really have 255 standing tickets. They list some for 300 or 400 EUR + fees. Then the top end is 3000, 4500 or 5000 EUR for the same type of ticket. That is only to make the cheaper ones look reasonable.

The viagogo Berlin standing tickets sell for about the same price as on German ebay. Prices have been decreasing.

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latvianinexile
I have been watching viagogo for quite some time now, seen the BBC documentary etc.

Example: when viagogo lists 255 Berlin standing tickets, as they do right now, that does not mean they really have 255 standing tickets. They list some for 300 or 400 EUR + fees. Then the top end is 3000, 4500 or 5000 EUR for the same type of ticket. That is only to make the cheaper ones look reasonable.

The viagogo Berlin standing tickets sell for about the same price as on German ebay. Prices have been decreasing.

<<< Example: when viagogo lists 255 Berlin standing tickets, as they do right now, that does not mean they really have 255 standing tickets >>>

Correct, which is why the term SOLD OUT is entirely meaningless these days. There is only one true definition of SOLD OUT, and that is when ALL tickets from the PRMARY VENDOR have been sold at FACE VALUE, i.e. the original stated price on the ticket.

Instead, it seems that these days the term SOLD OUT actually means that not only has the proportion of tickets made available to the public at face value been sold, but ALSO that the allowance of tickets destined for the secondary market for immediate resale at inflated prices has been dispersed.

It is the second bit that's the con, and it's a con that is simply becoming larger and larger in scale, provoking an ever-increasing distortion of the market for any given event. Consequently, it is absolutely impossible for the likes of you and I to gauge with reasonable accuracy what TRUE demand for any given event actually is. But when you see some several hundred tickets for any particular event already on sale within minutes of an official public sale from a primary vendor starting, the one thing you DO know is that the event is NOT genuinely SOLD OUT. And furthermore, you also know for sure that the tickets are simply part of an allocation put aside for resale on the secondary market at anything other than their stated face value, they've simply been excluded from the original public offering.

What a load of shite !! If ever a practice needs to be legislated against, this is it !

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

Paris show - situation 21 May

VIAGOGO: 115 available, cheapest is £342. Face value of this ticket is €111.50 (£91) - so they're asking nearly FOUR times the price !! F**k O** !!

Funny this, but there were 112 earlier today. So how come there's now 115 ? The bullshit goes on ...........

[www.viagogo.co.uk]

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

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latvianinexile
I have been watching viagogo for quite some time now, seen the BBC documentary etc.

Example: when viagogo lists 255 Berlin standing tickets, as they do right now, that does not mean they really have 255 standing tickets. They list some for 300 or 400 EUR + fees. Then the top end is 3000, 4500 or 5000 EUR for the same type of ticket. That is only to make the cheaper ones look reasonable.

The viagogo Berlin standing tickets sell for about the same price as on German ebay. Prices have been decreasing.

Well, there's now 258 !!!

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