Row over proposal to cap price of resold gig tickets

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/12805620

Guy ads his 2 pence worth, which is only worth that, I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this one!

Quote :

Elbow's Guy Garvey says fans should be able to make a profit on unwanted tickets

Quote :

"If you've had the foresight to buy a ticket and then unfortunately can't go I think a mark-up of 50% is tolerable," said Elbow's Guy Garvey.

Lol, Really??
If this quote is correct then I really despair!!
I had civilized conversation with Phil Chadwick Elbow's manager in person, recently, after the Cambridge gig about all the ticket touts 'foresight' to buy up loads of elbow tickets to put straight on ebay to make a profit from us on the warm up gig, and for what happened with the elbow concerts with the Halle previously.
He and Metropolis and SEE were fully aware of the situation, and I felt guilty and embarrassed for even discussing the subject of the ease with which touts have direct first access to the promoters tickets with Phil.
Didn't some venues used to do returns and refunds?

Now 6 months down the line of my original foresight, I can't even GIVE away for nothing, the the 02 arena ticket for monday that I can't use!
When really I should be expecting a £15 profit on it!
Hilarious.
Good on Adele and My Chemical Romance anyway.

I can understand when people genuinely can't go, but advocating 'foresight'
in seizing an opportunity to make money on the back of ticket sales in general simply isn't right.

Be a different story if it was reselling any of the music onward, or any other copyright infringement without them getting a cut eh !

Dear me let himself down there. Having suffered at the hands of toerags who are after a quick buck. It's just morally wrong to expect more than what you paid for it.

Maybe it's something to do with being brought up never to rip off your own.

lucky with disease wrote:

Lol, Really??
If this quote is correct...

He said it alright - it on the radio this morning as I was about to head out and my thought was did I hear what I think I heard?

Seatwave's declaration that the 10% mark-up idea is 'rubbish' is funny though - talk about a vested interest in keeping the status quo. And if a black market forms then so be it - it'll still be a lot smaller than the current secondary ticket market.

Quote :

Didn't some venues used to do returns and refunds?

Places with Royal in the name and some of the 'highbrow' theatre type places but usually only if the show is sold out and they think they will be able to re-sell the tickets.

Quote :

I can't even GIVE away for nothing, the the 02 arena ticket for monday that I can't use!
When really I should be expecting a £15 profit on it!

Well that's the other side of all this - there are plenty of shows that don't sell out, and should you expect them to take back a ticket just because you don't want to go?

Most of the practical solutions to scalping cost money (even more expensive tickets), or make getting in to the venue even slower than it is now. or they could do a fanclub presale...if they had a fanclub...

I don't know why/how it's so difficult to get something into law though - isn't re-sale of premiership football tickets banned?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/mar/11/olympic-ticket-touts-face-20000-pound-fine

Quote :

The Metropolitan police's Operation Podium division has stepped up its activity to try to disrupt the activities of touts. Touting tickets for football matches is an offence. While reselling tickets for other sporting events and concerts is not a criminal offence, it may breach the promoter's terms and conditions..

Metropolis actually did cancel a few of the elbow touted tickets because they were breaching the terms and conditions.
SEE tickets have everyones details that book.

What time was this on the radio?
was it BBC6?
i want to hear it with my own ears.

I wonder when the last time Mr Guy 50% mark up Garvey bought a ticket for a gig anyway!!

Tue, 22 Mar 11

Duration:
12 mins

Available:
6 days remaining
Disco legend Loleatta Holloway dies, Reading & Leeds headliners announced, secondary ticketing debate, Mark Reeder in Berlin, Concert for Japan


http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/6musicnews

interview influential musicians to give the ok on ticket touts profiteering....50%, mind don't to be too excessive!

Interesting the amount of people, I had correspondence with on ebay who had put their elbow tickets up for their own personal gain, before the tour, for a hefty profit off other fans, yet insisted they were true fans.

Although a 50% mark up on a ticket's face value on Ebay sounds excessive, it actually isn't when you think about it.

A 50% mark up on a £30 face value ticket (ie £45) might look like profiteering, but once you take into account the £5 booking fee and the £2.50 postage cost of the ticket, add the cost of listing on Ebay, then subtract Ebay's commission from the sale (something approaching 20%), there really isn't a lot of room for an excessive profit.

Indeed, when some ticket retailers bundle even more fees than that on top of the ticket (*coughSEETICKETScough* Transaction fees, my arse) and you've also got the postage costs of selling it on to whoever buys it from you.

The main problem is the outright shameful resellers who slap a 'Buy It Now' price on tickets of about 200% face value or more.

Mr Woman wrote:

Although a 50% mark up on a ticket's face value on Ebay sounds excessive, it actually isn't when you think about it.

A 50% mark up on a £30 face value ticket (ie £45) might look like profiteering, but once you take into account the £5 booking fee and the £2.50 postage cost of the ticket, add the cost of listing on Ebay, then subtract Ebay's commission from the sale (something approaching 20%), there really isn't a lot of room for an excessive profit.

My boyfeind said exactly the same thing, but there are other avenues to sell tickets, ebay isn't the only one! Plus from what I've seen on eBay when selling a ticket people always incorporate the initial booking fee and postage into the price of the face value ticket anyway.

LongLegs wrote:

Mr Woman wrote:

Although a 50% mark up on a ticket's face value on Ebay sounds excessive, it actually isn't when you think about it.

A 50% mark up on a £30 face value ticket (ie £45) might look like profiteering, but once you take into account the £5 booking fee and the £2.50 postage cost of the ticket, add the cost of listing on Ebay, then subtract Ebay's commission from the sale (something approaching 20%), there really isn't a lot of room for an excessive profit.

My boyfiend said exactly the same thing, but there are other avenues to sell tickets, ebay isn't the only one! Plus from what I've seen on eBay when selling a ticket people always incorporate the initial booking fee and postage into the price of the face value ticket anyway.

So you show me the other avenues and ebay where personal greed hasn't taken over the 50% "Tolerance"?
We all know the mark ups we have been seeing for elbow tickets, and that people were jumping on the bandwagon because they could see that they could sell certain tickets for more than 300% the face value.
So this is just clouding the issue to salve consciences.
The whole point of suggesting 10% cap by law was to cover admin if you were using a secondary ticketing agency and yourown fees and postage if being a personal ticket tout on ebay. So that NO profit was made, but you weren't depriving someone else of the chance of a nice music night out just because you couldn't go.
The number of people with consideration for others and not just for their own greed and profit on ebay or other sites is very small. I only saw one or two where the seller actually said I only want face value and to cover postage, because I don't like to rip other music lovers off!

I suspect that the worst 'Buy It Now' culprits may be sources close to the agencies themselves. Do employees of agencies get first crack at any tickets that are upcoming? They are certainly in the strongest position to.

BBC6 obviously don't see this forum of music fans. They've stuck up that interview again.....talk about rubbing salt in a wound.

Lets see history repeat itself, all over again, with many of us being ripped off by touts when elbow announce their next gig dates.(as long as its 'just' 50%!! profit, please, you musn't rip us off too much on elbow tickets, dear touts!)
Even if we have had the foresight to be ready on the 'fan presale' to hit the button at 9am as soon as they go on sale, only a few of us manage to get through as the touts have their hotlines, and 10 minutes later there are the tickets we could have bought, but they are sitting on ebay for criminal amounts instead.

Tackling Touts
MP prepares for a second reading of her ticketing bill
08/04/2011
Adrian Larkin
In a months time, MP Sharon Hodgson, who has gained some musical allies in her bid to tackle ticket touts, will have a second reading of her Private Members' Bill.

Hodgson, who is the MP for Washington and Sunderland West, wants to prevent touts from getting hold of tickets before genuine fans can purchase them, and then reselling them at an inflated mark-up.

She is being supported Arctic Monkey's and Iron Maiden's management.


Listen below to the issues at stake:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/300g78 ..... (click skip add)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/news/20110408_tickets.shtml

Ticketmaster and Get Me In are the worst culprits. The recent sale of tickets for the up and coming Take That tour sold out in minutes but you could buy tickets on the sister website within a few hours. Prices were in the thousands so who's buying the tickets and then deciding they won't be able to go? Not ordinary fans, that's for sure.
I paid £39.00 to see Muse at Wembley and was charged £5.00 insurance and £5.00 p&p PER TICKET. I was charged eleven months before the concert but only received the tickets one week before the concert so it didn't leave me any time to find someone else who may have wanted them if I was unable to go. The system is weighed against the consumer and isn't getting any easier.

One saving grace was that none of the Cambridge JunctioN tickets were allowed to appear in Get ME IN, Seatwave, Viagogo etc. But those who bought to put on Ebay, collectively deprived 60 fans of buying at face value, 60 people at that gig had paid far more than 50% mark up to be there! and we know of people on here that were ripped off for the some of the arena tickets too.

Lets just see what happens about tickets when the next uk dates come...

The fact of the matter is that a few people are making large amounts of money by exploiting the hard work of people involved in the live entertainment industry and the passion of fans, whilst contributing nothing to either. This Bill seeks to address this problem, but to do it needs support - both inside and outside Parliament.



http://goo.gl/iqPHj

For anybody that wants to do anything about this.



Check the link...it makes fascinating reading.

"Sharon was presenting her Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill to Parliament for its Second Reading. This is her speech in support of her Bill.
Unfortunately the debate was filibustered by Conservative backbenchers, meaning that it will have to continue later in the year. The original Hansard source is here, and Sharon's Bill can be found here. See the 'Current Campaigns' section for details of how you can help with Sharon's campaign against ticket touting."

YOU AND YOURS, there was a discussion on radio 4 on tickets and touting on tuesday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010vyng#broadcasts
....available to listen, including Guy and Muse.

You and Yours has, for several years now, been investigating the way tickets for concerts and events have become commodities, with the internet providing the perfect marketplace. So, do you think re-selling tickets for a profit should be made illegal - and if not, should there be a limit that can be charged over and above the face value? If you're an artist, an entertainer, a tout or a consumer, get in touch with your views and experiences.

youandyours@bbc.co.uk

Channel 4 has defeated an injunction in the High Court on Wednesday, 22 February and can now reveal an important public interest investigation into how real fans are paying the price for hidden practices used by live event promoters and a major 'fan-to-fan ticket exchange'.

Dispatches, which will air on Thursday, 23 February at 9pm, went undercover inside one of the UK's biggest ticket reselling websites - Viagogo - and found that major promoters allocate hundreds or even thousands of tickets to be sold through their website at well above the face value.

Tickets for recent gigs and tours by Coldplay, Rihanna, Westlife, Take That, and V Festival have been allocated by the promoters in this way.

The application for an injunction was brought by Viagogo on the grounds of 'breach of confidence' and it was dismissed on all counts at the High Court.

A Channel 4 spokesperson says: 'We are pleased that we can now broadcast in full a programme of important public interest. It is disappointing that having provided Viagogo with a fair opportunity to respond to the allegations uncovered by our investigation several weeks ago, they chose instead to seek an injunction which would have effectively stopped the broadcast of our programme.'




http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-108/episode-1

Fans queuing for hours to buy tickets get turned away empty handed while tickets for the same 'sold out' events appear online shortly afterwards, sometimes at astronomical prices.

Channel 4 News correspondent Morland Sanders investigates the multi-million-pound world of online ticket reselling where fans desperate not to miss out on in-demand concerts, festivals and sporting events often buy their tickets.

Leading 'fan-to-fan' ticket exchange websites say they allow 'real fans' to sell on tickets they can no longer use.

Dispatches sent reporters undercover inside two major 'fan-to-fan' ticket exchange websites to investigate who is selling via their websites and why so many tickets appear at over the face value so soon after the box office sells out.

You can join in the discussion about the programme on Twitter using #TicketScandal.

I don't think that fans want to make profit out of ticket sales.
If you're a fan you buy the ticket months before the gig. You're excited and looking forward to it. And because of that you can't plan if you can or can't go. It happened to me, too. Got sick the day before the concert, so I couldn't sell it on E-bay or wherever.
And how can you make the difference. I wouldn't go to a Rolling Stone gig... But imagine I got the chance buying five tickets and then sell them overpriced... That has nothing to do with beeing a fan and selling a ticket cause you can't go.

I think the highest price tickets should be sold are the original prices. That would stop all the "money-making".
And to be honest, sometimes those are expensive enough (f.e. U2).

Mr Woman wrote:

I suspect that the worst 'Buy It Now' culprits may be sources close to the agencies themselves. Do employees of agencies get first crack at any tickets that are upcoming? They are certainly in the strongest position to.

The programme certainly confirmed my suspicions. The worst profiteers aren't fans at all, but the agencies themselves.

I don't think I could say I completely disagree with a small amount extra on a ticket from eBay if there is a genuine reason behind the ticket being sold, but big increases in my opinion are wrong and there should be a cap on the percentage extra charged.( surely genuine fans wouldn't wan't to rip each other off!!!)
From experience I have discovered how irritating and wrong the extra charges are ,When I first discovered Elbow were going to be at Jodrell Bank, I didn't really see a possibility of me going (but this was possibly because of my rubbish geography thinking Jodrell Bank was down towards Devon/Cornwall way) but I later discovered (after it was sold out) that it was closer to where I live (Newcastle), ... to cut a very long story short I looked on eBay and was horrified to find someone selling tickets for £87.50 EACH which in itself is bad but it said "more than 10 available" that's even worse ... really think there should be a law or something to stop this happening because im sure im not the only fan who REALLY wan'ts to go but can't because of people being simply profit hungry... Like iv'e already said , Im sure Genuine fans wouldn't rip each other off like this

ElbowFreak wrote:

I think the highest price tickets should be sold are the original prices. That would stop all the "money-making".
And to be honest, sometimes those are expensive enough (f.e. U2).

Yes! Muse are the biggest ordeal I have tickets-wise. The recent sale for the O2 gigs later this year was ~£55 per ticket face value which is average for them these days, and after fees worked out to ~£65. Plus with the big venues there's no option to get tickets directly from them like the small venues do, which would usually work out a bit cheaper.

I note most of the eBay touts are selling the Muse ones for ~£150 per ticket. Even saw a listing for 3 seated tickets for £800.

I had the nightmare of trying to get tickets .I got through on the second release date.put all my card details in but the time lapsed and it said start again, of course they were all gone. What I couldn't get my head round was why it offered up to 16 tickets ! why would you need to book that many? England fans are strictly limited to two tickets per member. it is high time this corruption was stopped.