Warned to face ‘trouble’
ticket sellers such as Ticketmaster, for preventing Kiwis from being able to buy tickets to their favourite events.
Other methods event promoters are looking at to thwart scalpers include staggering ticket sales, adding Smart Stadium sold out in minutes. Sheeran’s general admission tickets cost $159.90 but some tickets for the show were yesterday on Viagogo for $1550.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said there was an active Commerce Commission investigation into Viagogo and they were actively monitoring the issue.
Ticket scalping is not illegal in New Zealand, unless the Government specifically designates an event – such as the Lions rugby tour – to be protected by the Major Events Management Act which prohibits tickets from being resold for a higher price.
Eccles, also the head of the New Zealand Promoters Association, believed the government was not acting fast enough to deal with the problem.
‘‘It is not illegal to do it because the stupid government will do it for so-called major sporting events like rugby but they won’t do it for a major event like, say, Bruce Springsteen playing in Christchurch,’’ Eccles said.
Jessica Wilson, head of research at Consumer NZ, said it had received an increasing number of complaints about ticket resale sites.
‘‘Absolutely, the complaints indicate how widespread a problem this is, particularly with Viagogo.’’
United States-based Ken Lowson, the most notorious ticket scalper in history, agrees the Commerce Commission needs to ‘‘wake up’’ and act quickly to protect consumers from the ‘‘cancer’’ of ticket resale sites.
Lowson claims to have made more than $25 million dollars as a ticket scalper before FBI agents raided his offices in California in 2009.
Now Lowson has turned from poacher to gamekeeper, and educates people how to get the better of ticket resale sites. He described Ticketmaster as the ‘‘mother scalper’’ for supplying Viagogo with tickets.
Ticketmaster – which also operates Ticketmaster Resale – now controls ticketing services at almost every major venue in Auckland and Wellington with Lowson saying its business model was to overpay the artist and scalp the tickets through resale sites.
Leading New Zealand promoter Manolo Echave said reselling was ‘‘a cancer’’ on the New Zealand entertainment industry.
In May, the New Zealand Promoters Association expressed dismay at a decision by the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency to choose Ticketmaster as exclusive ticketer to Venues Wellington, without any consultation with the promoters as owners of the events held in their venues.
‘‘When you have an entity building like they have, it’s been like a cancer that has spread around the world. They manage the artist, the venue and the ticket agency,’’ Echave said.
Ticketmaster was approached for comment but had not responded.