Ticketmaster to Close ‘Resale Sites’

[Nitefly]

Good news for music lovers everywhere.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45133094

Not a ‘ban’ of course but a sign of acknowledgement that the current practice of buying tickets to resell them is unpalatable and unacceptable to artists and their fans. I do wonder whether this is to get ahead of the curb for any British legislation on which there would have no doubt been much ‘behind closed doors’ discussion.

I’d definitely support an actual ban of ticket ‘resales’ for a profit.

 

[wedrum]

about time

 

[Mr.E.]

I've just been to see Iron Maiden. They do "ticketless" entry. The card that buys the ticket(s) is swiped on entry to confirm it's the same person. It will not be perfect but it's a step in the right direction.

 

[Glanza]

Now if only Ticketmaster could close their fee robbing selves

 

[Marky]

Unfortunately, I don't have any faith in Ticketmaster to help anyone but themselves. This will only drive their traffic to other resale sites such as ViaGoGo.

 

[Rotty]

achieves nothing until the other sites are got rid of

 

[VincentHanna]

I've just been to see Iron Maiden. They do "ticketless" entry. The card that buys the ticket(s) is swiped on entry to confirm it's the same person. It will not be perfect but it's a step in the right direction.

They've been doing that for years. I remember going to an Arcade Fire gig around 2012/3 and had to have the ticket I purchased the card on.

Some sellers get around this by having a ticket for themselves, meeting up with you beforehand and go in with you!

 

[dowie]

I'm a bit 50/50 on this one, while I don't generally like touts and hate the idea of people buying a mass of tickets the second they go on sale, contributing to them selling out in a minute or two and then reselling at a huge mark up there is a bit of a silly situation in that this sort of thing is sort of allowed.

If you allow the resale of tickets then tickets will be sold on and people will speculate. I do wonder also if there is some collusion element here between parts of the entertainment industry and resellers - I mean you cooed take this thing quite far, there is an obvious price discovery element and if a block of tickets were unofficially allocated to resellers via some backdoor deal and sold at market rates rather than face value then you can earn a bit more without being seen to profiteer from fans/the audience etc.. obviously that is an extreme possibility but certainly the ticket seller sites find some utility in the resellers/touts and and don't completely shut them out.

The obvious solution is to have named tickets, require ID (and perhaps a facility to perhaps return them to be re-sold at face value via an official minus some admin fee) - this isn't too hard to implement necessarily (especially if all tickets are allocate/sold by a single source), but that isn't how the industry works at the moment and currently the big players all seem to still find some value in the touts. This whole issue exists simply because tickets are often freely transferable, chose to not allow that and you can kill the tout industry quite quickly.

 

[Iron-man]

been a while coming but Ticketmaster rip you off with there fees just as much as anyone else

 

[Scam]

Good news although it will have little effect until it's properly illegal to resell tickets. Ticketmaster were totally complicit (pretty much every event of theirs was sold out and on the resale sites within minutes) so it feels like they're just after some good press before something actually really changes with regards to the law.

 

[MikeTheNative]

Is the answer not simply only allow tickets to be sold at the value they were purchased at?

 

[dowie]

Is the answer not simply only allow tickets to be sold at the value they were purchased at?

essentially yes, and in order to do that you need to be able to exercise some control over process of reselling (which you can't do if the tickets aren't tied to any individual and can simply be used by anyone in possession of them)

 

[a1ex2001]

The fix is simple a tiny piece of legislation that bans two things, firstly the charging of an 'admin/booking fee' to the fan and secondly the sale of tickets for above face value. The profit for the ticket selling company should come from the artist/event as it is them who are purchasing a service from the ticket sales company and removing admin fee's gets rid of the grey area where people sell them on at inflated prices to cover all costs. I have no problem with a re-sales market but again the costs should be incurred by the seller as anyone genuinely looking to move on unneeded tickets is looking to offset the much larger loss of the tickets going unused.

Simples really but won't happen as our pathetic government loves an artificial industry that makes big business richer at the expense of Joe Average! Massive respect to the artists like Ed Sheran taking a stand against this practice.

 

[a1ex2001]

Good news although it will have little effect until it's properly illegal to resell tickets. Ticketmaster were totally complicit (pretty much every event of theirs was sold out and on the resale sites within minutes) so it feels like they're just after some good press before something actually really changes with regards to the law.

they are getting out now and trying to look like the good guys while taking business from the few good guys in the industry, there integrated resale tool is yet another 'scam' trying to hide inflated prices for the consumer and increased profits for them!

 

[wolfie138]

the hypocrisy of ticket******* is mind boggling. how they dare to claim to be looking out for customers and combatting touts when they are the ****ers putting a lot of stuff immediately on those sites is beyond me.

 

[Nitefly]

I don’t think it’s outrageous to charge some admin fees. They have to cover running costs AND make a profit somehow. It should however be capped at the lower of, say, £5 (maybe more) and a percentage of the ticket price.

 

[Liquidfox]

The obvious solution is to have named tickets, require ID (and perhaps a facility to perhaps return them to be re-sold at face value via an official minus some admin fee)

The Europeans seem to have this sorted with their festivals. They use a combination of PayLogic (Their TM) and TicketSwap.

You buy your ticket as normal through PayLogic, you're then emailed a link. The link contains your tickets which you must personalise with your names (or send to your friends so they can personalise their own). If, for whatever reason, you want to sell your ticket, you list it on TicketSwap. The likes of Q-Dance (a big hardstyle promoter in Holland) has teamed up with the pair so that if you purchase a ticket sold on TicketSwap, you're generated a new barcode instantly voiding the original one. It means that the seller can genuinely only sell as many tickets as they actually own. Not only that, but you can only list your ticket for a maximum of 120% of the face value.

It's safe, efficient and works really well. TicketSwap have a presence in the UK, but not to the same extent and don't employ the SafeSwap feature.

 

[Oxide™]

or just use Twickets

 

[413x]

Pretty easy to sort this out really.
So many ways.

Oh, tixketmaster obviously trying for some good PR. Think everyone knows their game!

 

[arknor]

why you would ever want to go and see someone lip-sync a song is beyond me