Secondary Ticketing Sites

[Hugh Jass]

22 minutes ago, waterfalls212434 said:

tory government, did you ever expect them to give a flying fuck......is it something they can get rich or powerful off? no? well theres your answer because that is literally all those bastards care about.

Hi Penguin.

[Quark]

Probably going to get shouted down for this, and quite loudly I expect, but surely some responsibility sits with those who pay the vastly inflated prices?

Or is the assumption that those who pay that much are silly arses who can afford it and aren't "real" fans?

I've either oversimplified it or answered my own question, but I'm not wasting good typing time for nowt.

[stuartbert two hats]

1 minute ago, Scruffylovemonster said:

No you're right. In a way the whole responsibility lays at their feet cos if they didn't pay it the sites would quickly stop. 

The second paragraph is both correct but also backs up your first. It isn't an alternative statement. 

I dunno. You can quite easily be 'a real' fan who isn't rich, but are paying the massive fee because you're simply obsessed with the band.

Or to put it another way, you might have more money than sense because you're particularly lacking in sense, rather than particularly fiscally well endowed.

[Quark]

2 minutes ago, Scruffylovemonster said:

No you're right. In a way the whole responsibility lays at their feet cos if they didn't pay it the sites would quickly stop. 

The second paragraph is both correct but also backs up your first. It isn't an alternative statement. 

I suppose that what I meant is that it's not an effective solution for your "average" fan as they're not the ones paying the stupid money. Probably also the case.

I should probably just talk to myself and cut out the middleman tonight. I appear to be answering my own bastard questions. Strange day.

[Quark]

1 minute ago, stuartbert two hats said:

I dunno. You can quite easily be 'a real' fan who isn't rich, but are paying the massive fee because you're simply obsessed with the band.

Or to put it another way, you might have more money than sense because you're particularly lacking in sense, rather than particularly fiscally well endowed.

Ok, so that sits with the fan in that case. 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

I'm not sure where I sit with this. Firstly I've never sold a ticket above face value and wouldn't. And I'm dead against people buying up masses of tickets to then sell on at a profit. However it can only keep happening because people keep paying the inflated prices and fuelling the demand, so this suggests the value of the ticket is actually higher that it was originally sold for. Of course this is massively subjective, some people will have a ceiling on what they would pay to see anybody for 90 minutes regardless of the act, but some acts will never meet demand and have fans that will pay over what a lot of us would value the price of the ticket at. No band wants to be seen to be ripping their fans off, there would naturally be a price for any gig that would mean the tickets took a while to sell out (but eventually would) because it would make people question the cost and if they could justify it, but that particular price would probably find that particular artist in the newspapers for the wrong reasons. So the secondary market is probably a way that many artists can sell below the true value of the ticket, and not seem like they are fleecing their fans, but at the same time grab a slice of what is probably closer to the actual value of the ticket. Again I'm not agreeing with it, but if it keeps happening it means people are paying these prices, and even if there is an element of artificial demand, if the touts buying all these tickets up couldn't then sell them on for a profit they'd soon stop and it would die out, but the demand can't be artificial because they still sell enough tickets to make it viable. 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

I guess what I'm also trying to say is that gig tickets are a commodity that are hard to value. If an artists puts their tickets up for sale at £50, X% of their fans won't pay it, X% will feel that's about right and be happy to pay it, but no more than £50, X% would pay £60 and no more and so on and so on. A certain perecentage may be happy to pay £100+ some £200, so there is no one price which is exactly accurate, hence you get the secondary market.

[Tuna]

When it's impossible for 'real fans' to buy primary tickets, secondary sites are the next port of call. For the vast majority of people, ticket purchasing/gig going aren't the norm; awareness is a huge issue in this topic, so they might not even be aware that the secondary sites are even that, or that the ticket prices are hyperinflated. So where I agree that consumerism fuels the problem, ignorance is also a gigantic factor masked by widespread advertising and, as mentioned above, sponsored hits from Google. 

[waterfalls212434]

4 hours ago, Hugh Jass said:

Hi Penguin.

I assure you `penguin` isnt the only one around who has an intense dislike of Tory party scumbags. This is getting rather amusing now though....what do I have to do to prove im not penguin? Shall I come to the efests meetup dressed up like a fucking orca whale or something? or a polar bear? just in case he does in fact make an appearance and I need to attack him and devour his young to prove I am not he? dont make me go costume shopping!

Edited February 21, 2017 by waterfalls212434

[DeanoL]

7 hours ago, briddj said:

Any band's management for any tour could all but stamp out secondary sales by making their tour tickets ID (a la Radiohead). Yes, scummy Viagogo still allow the sale of ID tickets (in a scurilous way) but it's nothing like the same.

The problem is, it's not cheap to do that. Especially if a venue isn't set up for it. So there's a balance to be had. What's better - selling tickets for £25 and know they'll sell out right away and touts will pick up some. Or splash out on ID tickets, sell those tickets for £30 and stop the touts. But that then means for those fans whom that fiver makes a difference, they then can't go. Whereas previously they'd probably have been able to get tickets if they just made sure they were online at the right time.

I mean, I think maybe we have a skewed perspective because Glastonbury is one place where demand exceeds supply by a fair bit and you can do absolutely everything you possibly can to get tickets (everyone in the group trying, multiple computers, book the morning off work, etc) and still end up without them. That isn't the case for almost any other show. Because if Ed Sheeran had the same sort of demand as Glastonbury had, he'd book a second night. And then a third. They don't leave that money on the table.

If you approach tour tickets with the same zeal most of us approach Glastonbury tickets, you'll easily get tickets for 99.9% of shows. So essentially: do you have cheaper tickets to protect the less well off fans, or more expensive, tout-proof tickets to protect the unorganised/lazy fans?

[incident]

20 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

That isn't the case for almost any other show. Because if Ed Sheeran had the same sort of demand as Glastonbury had, he'd book a second night. And then a third. They don't leave that money on the table.

But major acts do leave that money on the table. All the time. Look at the U2 tour as an extreme example - they're playing their most popular album, and they've chosen to do a limited set of US & Europe dates. they've probably left hundreds of millions of pounds on the table, and that's not even an exaggeration - at their ticket prices, the band will easily be earning minimum £5 million a show after venue & road costs. Probably much more once merch etc is factored in.

I think you're vastly underestimating the demand for Sheeran tickets. It's perfectly realistic to say that if he doubled the amount of shows he was doing, he'd still sell most if not all of the extra tickets.

[ghostdancer1]

16 hours ago, briddj said:

Any band's management for any tour could all but stamp out secondary sales by making their tour tickets ID (a la Radiohead). Yes, scummy Viagogo still allow the sale of ID tickets (in a scurilous way) but it's nothing like the same.

....

Take Ed Sheeran and his massive attack on people selling the tickets on/suggesting fans use Twickets. First off, he could have made his tickets ID tickets.

Ed Sheeran tickets have the bookers name printed on the tickets and that person needs to be there with the card for the ticketholders to be allowed in.

Edited February 22, 2017 by ghostdancer1

[bennyk]

7 minutes ago, ghostdancer1 said:

Ed Sheeran tickets have the bookers name printed on the tickets and that person needs to be there with the card for the ticketholders to be allowed in.

They don't as my partner has 2 for newcastle in April and no name on them 

 

Edit: Purchased via Eventim

Edited February 22, 2017 by bennyk

[briddj]

10 hours ago, DeanoL said:

The problem is, it's not cheap to do that. Especially if a venue isn't set up for it. So there's a balance to be had. What's better - selling tickets for £25 and know they'll sell out right away and touts will pick up some. Or splash out on ID tickets, sell those tickets for £30 and stop the touts. But that then means for those fans whom that fiver makes a difference, they then can't go. Whereas previously they'd probably have been able to get tickets if they just made sure they were online at the right time.

I mean, I think maybe we have a skewed perspective because Glastonbury is one place where demand exceeds supply by a fair bit and you can do absolutely everything you possibly can to get tickets (everyone in the group trying, multiple computers, book the morning off work, etc) and still end up without them. That isn't the case for almost any other show. Because if Ed Sheeran had the same sort of demand as Glastonbury had, he'd book a second night. And then a third. They don't leave that money on the table.

If you approach tour tickets with the same zeal most of us approach Glastonbury tickets, you'll easily get tickets for 99.9% of shows. So essentially: do you have cheaper tickets to protect the less well off fans, or more expensive, tout-proof tickets to protect the unorganised/lazy fans?

The cost difference isn't anywhere near that. If bands like Bear's Den can do it for their tour, and Catfish for theirs, any medium sized band can.

And Sheeran certainly can. He is easily the biggest male solo act in the world right now.

[briddj]

2 hours ago, ghostdancer1 said:

Ed Sheeran tickets have the bookers name printed on the tickets and that person needs to be there with the card for the ticketholders to be allowed in.

Only for the Royal Albert Hall show, not for his UK tour.

[evilduck]

14 hours ago, Tuna said:

When it's impossible for 'real fans' to buy primary tickets, secondary sites are the next port of call. For the vast majority of people, ticket purchasing/gig going aren't the norm; awareness is a huge issue in this topic, so they might not even be aware that the secondary sites are even that, or that the ticket prices are hyperinflated. So where I agree that consumerism fuels the problem, ignorance is also a gigantic factor masked by widespread advertising and, as mentioned above, sponsored hits from Google. 

Yeah I agree with this. I have friends who go to gigs a fair bit but still seem quite ignorant about which sites are real primary ticketing sites, and which are resellers. If you search 'Ed Sheeran tickets' and don't know any better, then you will probably just click whatever links are at the top.

[briddj]

21 minutes ago, evilduck said:

Yeah I agree with this. I have friends who go to gigs a fair bit but still seem quite ignorant about which sites are real primary ticketing sites, and which are resellers. If you search 'Ed Sheeran tickets' and don't know any better, then you will probably just click whatever links are at the top.

There is no doubt whatsoever that a LOT of people buy from Viagogo with absolutely zero idea they are paying above face.

I said earlier exactly what you have. Viagogo must pay a fortune to be at the top of Google for every music ticket search. And I'm pretty much sure it pays for them too.

[swede]

The primary ticket sites like ticketmaster and seetickets need to take responsibility as they are in on the scam of inflated ticket prices on the secondary sites.

I read an article today of a guy who claims to make £30,000 a year after tax on top of his normal job from selling tickets on secondary sites. He was selling 28 tickets for the Ed Sheeran gig in Glasgow and had sold 300 for the Still Game live shows in Glasgow as well. How do these people manage to buy up so many tickets ? 

Another story I read a couple of months ago was a guy who claimed to be a millionaire tout as he had agreements in place with ticket companies to sell him blocks of tickets before they go on sale so he could put them onto secondary sites. The ticket companies denied the claims to which he replied "how am I so rich then" 

I also think artists need to take responsibility for where their tickets are sold and take action. Prince pulled a full uk tour last year after he found guaranteed front row tickrts, at £500 each, on sale on getmein the day before the general sale.

Its no good the likes of Ed Sheeran putting statements about how their against secondary ticketing if they don't actually do something about it, they're just empty words to dull the anger of the stupid amongst us 

[NorwegianBlur]

I'm from Norway, and here you're not allowed to sell you ticket for more than face value, keeps touts out of the game 

[briddj]

28 minutes ago, swede said:

The primary ticket sites like ticketmaster and seetickets need to take responsibility as they are in on the scam of inflated ticket prices on the secondary sites.

I read an article today of a guy who claims to make £30,000 a year after tax on top of his normal job from selling tickets on secondary sites. He was selling 28 tickets for the Ed Sheeran gig in Glasgow and had sold 300 for the Still Game live shows in Glasgow as well. How do these people manage to buy up so many tickets ? 

Another story I read a couple of months ago was a guy who claimed to be a millionaire tout as he had agreements in place with ticket companies to sell him blocks of tickets before they go on sale so he could put them onto secondary sites. The ticket companies denied the claims to which he replied "how am I so rich then" 

I also think artists need to take responsibility for where their tickets are sold and take action. Prince pulled a full uk tour last year after he found guaranteed front row tickrts, at £500 each, on sale on getmein the day before the general sale.

Its no good the likes of Ed Sheeran putting statements about how their against secondary ticketing if they don't actually do something about it, they're just empty words to dull the anger of the stupid amongst us 

Yep, they are all complicit. See Tickets don't have their own reselling site but they must know who is mass-buying tickets on their platform. Ticketmaster and Ticketweb openly encourage it. Promoters allow tickets to be sold in batches of 8-10 per ticket site for some events - how many people ever realistically need to buy 8 tickets? (Obviously few ocassions but that can be catered for as group bookings with some thought.)

The cry is always for legislation to stop it, but there actually does not need to be legislation is the music industry actually doesn't want it to happen and is getting its cut.

[DeanoL]

6 hours ago, briddj said:

The cost difference isn't anywhere near that. If bands like Bear's Den can do it for their tour, and Catfish for theirs, any medium sized band can.

And Sheeran certainly can. He is easily the biggest male solo act in the world right now.

As ever: it depends.

Primarily on the venues and how set up they are to handle that sort of ticketing. If it's someone who does it regularly they'll charge a bit more for it, but it'll be fine. If you're playing venues rarely do it or have never done it before then you'll be the ones fronting the cost of training staff if you want it to happen.

And on top of all that, it's another production expense. So yeah, maybe it's a choice between that confetti cannons or back projection.

If you look at an act like Frank Turner, he's against touting, but doesn't do the ID tickets. But what he does do is cut costs to the bone and tickets for his (sell out) shows are regularly £10-£20 than other bands selling out the same venues.

So yeah, I'm sure Ed could afford to introduce personalised ticketing, but he could probably also afford to knock ten quid off the price of a ticket and he won't do that either.

[briddj]

How much and how long does it take a venue to train door staff who are already scanning people into the venue to match ID with names on a ticket?!

[DeanoL]

37 minutes ago, briddj said:

How much and how long does it take a venue to train door staff who are already scanning people into the venue to match ID with names on a ticket?!

Depends how good a job you want them to do and how much you care about fake ID. You're also significantly increasing the time it takes to get people through the door which can be an issue with larger venues, and may result in needing more door staff. You'd also need a process in place for if the ID was questionable, and have people on hand to deal with folk not bringing ID because some won't read the ticket and won't have any, and some will have bought tickets secondhand anyway and not realise... Which is fine if you already have a bunch of security working the door but again, not all venues will have that, especially theatres.

Not saying anything is impossible. Just that it's difficult. Scanning e-tickets has only become commonplace in the past couple of years, despite being around for the best part of a decade. Indeed, I remember Neil strongly advocating for the barcode scanning system on here years before anyone actually used it....

[briddj]

All venues have to work with ID and what is/isn't genuine already. That's not new. All venues have age restrictions, in fact all door staff with have to be fully trained on such things anyway.

All venues work with fake tickets which don't scan, or print at home tickets sold as duplicates.

It's all VERY do-able. The music industury just doesn't want to do it because it's making too much on the side.

[DeanoL]

2 hours ago, briddj said:

All venues have to work with ID and what is/isn't genuine already. That's not new. All venues have age restrictions, in fact all door staff with have to be fully trained on such things anyway.

All venues work with fake tickets which don't scan, or print at home tickets sold as duplicates.

That's not true. Where you say "all venues" is actually only a small subset. Arts Centres, Theatres, and most seated venues don't have either age restrictions or have scanned tickets.

Plenty of mid-size music venues still aren't fully equipped for scanning e-tickets although it's a lot more now than it was two years ago. 

Hell, Sheeran's RAH gig is apparently using ID tickets but they don't ID as a matter of course. Don't believe the show has an age restriction either.

The big arenas won't have restrictions for a lot of shows either as families attend. You really think Take That only play 16+ shows?

Most of the toilet circuit won't have e-ticket scanning in place either.

You're generalising your own very limited experience to every venue in the UK and it's just plain nonsense. Maybe every Live Nation venue can do them now, but if those are the only music venues we're bothering to even recognise as existing at this point then the UK scene is in a sad state.

(And of course, the biggest touting problems happen when big bands play the sort of small venues that would struggle to support this stuff).