How would you change the ticket resale market?

Attorney General of the United States of America -EricT. Schneiderman announces Findings of Investigations into Consumer Abuses in Live Entertainment Ticket Industry- quote- My office will CRACK DOWN on those who break the laws , prey on ordinary citizens and deny New Yorkers affordable access to the concerts and sporting events they Love–music to my bears and here ? HMG -not at this time -full expose : https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-announces-findings-investigation-consumer-abuses-live-entertainment

stop touts being able to mass purchase then sell tickets on at highly inflated prices. make it illegal to do so.

I recall either a “Despatches” or “Panorama” programme a few years ago where an undercover reporter witnessed the call centre staff of a ticket agency purchasing tickets for an event using their own credit cards only for those same tickets to re-appear on a reseller site the agency also operated at greatly inflated prices.

There should be legislation to control re-sales limiting prices to face value plus say 2.5% handling fee

Can we not put a limit on the number of ticket’s sold to each credit card?

I think the Government should do more to stop the resale sites making such huge profits.
10% over the ticket price should be the maximum allowed, ticket ID and original value should be on the ticket.
Heavy fines and closure of web site is the only way to stop these people.
It is always the honest hard working people who suffer

You are never going to stop resale of tickets, and it would be wrong to – some people genuinely can’t go. But you can do MUCH more to kerb excessive profiteering. You can limit the resale price to face value + say 50% (to cover fees etc) or force people when listing them to state the seat numbers – the big sellers such as Ticketmaster can easily check if they were bought by a person or a bot and then cancel them. Unfortunately the big sellers are part of this problem as they are participating in the practice of ripping people off so they’re just turning a blind eye and hoping it will go away. Let’s be honest it probably will go away as no one has the balls to tackle it. I mean, it’s not rocket science is it.

If nobody bought tickets from touts they would soon disappear but while you have people willing to pay £100 for a £5 ticket they will still be around. Don’t buy these tickets – simple.

I would expect the number of tickets purchased but no longer required for personal reasons to be fewer than 1% of the number sold, so how has the industry been allowed to fabricate such a vast volume of resold tickets? Not by honest endeavours, surely?

In my eyes, anybody selling any ticket is an agent of the main vendor and therefore should not charge more than the face value. Any commission MUST come from the main vendor.

Limit the number of tickets per purchaser, and perhaps this may give more people the chance to buy .touts are bulk buying and thier markup is often daylight robbery!!!!

I have never felt the urge, even when younger (or never had the money) to go to the sorts of concerts that attract such questionable ticketing practices. It all seems very superficial & fklakey to me. Is it me….???

I frequently attend gigs and shows, and always try and buy direct from the venue/event management company. Yeah, there have been times I’ve not got the tickets I’ve wanted, but I’ve never then gone to find them elsewhere, as I operate on a personal “you snooze, you lose” philosophy (and yes, I really have set alarms to make sure I’m in with a chance).

This problem will continue as long as there are people dumb enough to pay exorbitant ticket prizes – I love my music, but no artist is worth *that* much money (sorry!!).

I have never bought from these sites. It is not a fair market place. Why not ban sales of more than say, 6 tickets per purchaser/email address until again,say, 4 weeks before the event? However, I assume the way these operators work is that their computer programmes can at present, override any conditions of purchase/rules put in place.

If people did not buy at inflated prices then there would not be a market for the tickets. Do the purveyors of the tickets care that this is happening – I think not – in this technological age there must be a way that these sales can be controlled but the desire is not there. They must be held to account by law.

It should be outlawed!!!!!

I think it is quite possible to require ID to be shown at events, to prevent re-sale on secondary markets.

One very obnoxious practice is that some tickets are NEVER sold at face value. Promoters sometimes keep huge blocks of tickets, never sell them at face value and they are marketed at prices far above their face value. I do not understand why this is legal.

Harvey Goldsmith (Promoter) worked very hard to keep tickets in the hands of real fans. I think it is quite possible that a collective of promoters and global artists could take steps (e.g. provide ID, don’t withhold tickets to be sold at higher prices) to make it more difficult for touts and “legal secondary outlets” to re-sell at extortionate prices.

The busiest indoor music venue in the world is the O2 Arena. The next O2 Arena event is Take That who will play 6 dates commencing today and finishing on 12th June. Currently, tickets can be purchased for less than face value across all dates on the secondary market. If you take Stubhub, the official re-sale market of the O2 Arena, you can currently buy tickets for take that at around 40% of face value. Unfortunately, within various campaigns and across the media, you only hear about the tickets that are listed and vastly inflated prices. The same campaigners are not keen to report that the majority of tickets on secondary sites are sold BELOW face value. Something that was identified by Professor Waterson in the government review into secondary ticketing.

These sites should be monitored so they sell them at face value plus postage and nothing more. If this happened then more people would be able to buy them straight from the venues at the correct price.
Why do they want to buy these tickets so they can rip off the public it should not be allowed.

Why do we have re-sell sites at all? We only need a single official sales website for a particular event where we buy the tickets, and then just pick them up at the venue – a bit like a train ticket – from a ticket collection machine.
If you need to cancel you do so at the single website (full refund if done a reasonable amount of time before the event) and the tickets can be made available for resale immediately. No more touts. Simples!

I’ve never used them – nor do I intend to.

But then, I’ve never bought tickets to a concert, etc. !

My niece who lives in Australia, Purchased two tickets for the 2015 rugby world cup from what she thought was a re-seller site. turned out it was a scam site & she lost nearly $1000 Australian

Your article in the current issue of Which (August 2017) has clarified why I got stung when buying tickets for June’s Guns and Rosea concert. I ended up paying three times the original ticket price from Viagogo. It won’t happen again. Thanks,
Doug

I think I must have hit lucky with viagogo site as got tickets for 02 tennis finals cheaper than ticket price fantastic seats 5 rows back – much better seat than the one I had for final day and paid more for through normal outlet – think you really have to check out what you’re paying for before you buy ….