Secondary ticket websites: The great ticket scandal?

As discussed in The Independent last year, The Dispatches documentary The Great Ticket Scandal confirmed the worst fears for serial concert goers. Secondary ticket websites such as Seatwave, Viagogo and Get Me IN! appear to have become a second source of income for the ‘primary ticket agents’ (Ticketmaster, Live Nation, See Tickets etc).

The evidence presented on the programme suggests that a large number of tickets for highly popular events (a Take That concert or a Six Nations Rugby game for example) are allocated to the secondary ticket sites to be sold for a wildly inflated price. These tickets are sold to desperate fans who want the best seat in the house for double or even triple the original face value (there were examples of a single ticket going for thousands of pounds, but that is rare). A commission (the ballpark figure seems to be around 15 per cent) is then given to the secondary ticket sites and the rest lines the pockets of the primary ticket agents.

Seatwave proudly boast that they are: “The biggest secondary ticketing exchange in Europe.” A statement read out on Dispatches from Seatwave CEO Joe Cohen claims that: “Seatwave was set up five years ago to help fans get better access to events at market-based prices”. But wouldn’t fans have better access to tickets if large quantities of them weren’t bought up by the likes of Seatwave? Does “market-based price” mean up to three times their original value?

As a regular live music patron for almost 15 years, I’ve seen the effect these websites are having on live music first-hand. Getting tickets to any large event involves being in front of a computer a good ten minutes before they go on sale, pressing F5 (reload) every 3 seconds waiting for the mad scramble at 9am, when you click the ‘buy now’ button, only to be confronted with another screen telling you to ‘please be patient’ and ‘you are in a queue’, knowing full well that every second that ticks by hundreds of tickets are being snapped up by others. All you have for comfort is a loading bar which seems to have forgotten that its main function is to fill from left to right but instead appears to have made an art out of staying completely motionless.

Naturally, I’ve used secondary ticket sites myself of course. I’m not proud of it (and my wallet didn’t forgive me for weeks), but I’ve felt that crushing disappointment when confronted with the words ‘sold out’. I understand how reckless one can be in those five minutes between the thrill of thinking you’ll get to see your favourite band and the bitter blow that you can kiss goodbye any notion of seeing your heroes in the flesh. Of course the secondary ticket sites understand these five minutes better than anybody, which is why they will ensure that their allocated tickets are on sale the minute they are made available to the public (and, tellingly in some cases, days before they are made available for public on sale).

My own experience with secondary ticket sites was with Get Me IN! for a standing ticket to see Pearl Jam in Manchester. Like many secondary ticket site sales, my ticket was bought in the throes of disappointment just seconds after Ticketmaster had sold out. As it happens, I got to Get Me IN! through a banner on the Ticketmaster website, not a large coincidence considering that Get Me IN! is “a Ticketmaster Company”. It seems Ticketmaster get to have two cakes and eat them both!

The cheapest standing ticket I could find on this occasion was £100, £55 above the face value. I gritted my teeth, and entered my card details only to be stung once again with a ‘Processing Fee’ of £25. With a delivery fee of £5 and VAT on top of that, my grand total for 1 ticket was a staggering £134.50. That’s almost £90 more than the original value of the ticket. I should’ve been ecstatic that I was going to see one of my favourite bands of all time, but not at this price.

Until government legislation is put in place to make the secondary sale of tickets illegal, fans will continue to pay over the odds for live entertainment. One MP, Sharon Hodgson, is trying to bring a Sale of Tickets bill before parliament and I sincerely hope she is successful.

For more information go to http://www.sharonhodgson.org/ticket-touting-private-members-bill

Remfry Dedman is a singer/songwriter in south-east London

Picture: Getty Images

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