Mum fears Eminem ticket fake
Hundreds of Eminem fans who bought from ticket reseller Viagogo could be turned away from his concert in Wellington tomorrow.
Nelson woman Gaye Jenkins said she struggled for months to save $386 for an Eminem ticket for her teenage son Ricky, on top of $250 in airfares for him to travel to Wellington.
Yesterday, she had to tell Ricky he might not be able to go because his ticket came from Viagogo.
‘‘I just wanted to give him the experience of a lifetime,’’ she said. ‘‘He was just so utterly gutted . . . he’s only 16, and it was his Christmas present, and it was his dream to go.’’
Jenkins said she is disabled and as a single mother, she struggled for months to afford the ticket and airfares.
‘‘This is the one thing I could give my son . . . now he won’t even be able to go.’’
Ricky is a massive Eminem fan and he has a shirt a friend gave him from the rapper’s first New Zealand show in Auckland, she said.
‘‘He never takes it off and he won’t even let me wash it.’’
Ricky is devastated, she said. When she searched for a ticket, Viagogo was the first website to appear, she said. Pacific Rimming Tour, the boy from Stoke-on-Trent drew somewhere between 42,500 and 44,000 to the capital’s still relatively new outdoor multi-purpose venue.
‘‘Along with a repertoire of all his hits, he swore like a sailor, flashed his chest, and encouraged a bunch of the more brazen fans to do the same,’’ wrote The Dominion’s Bess Manson. Ever the entertainer, the Rock DJ singer also at one point donned an All Black shirt and phoned his mum.
THE ROLLING STONES (Westpac Stadium, April 18, 2006)
Only a handful of the 40,000 tickets on offer remained unsold when Mick, Keith and the gang brought their A Bigger Bang Tour to town.
‘‘The encore of You Can’t Always Get What You Want was proved a misnomer – we’d been getting all that we wanted all night!,’’ wrote
‘‘It came in a special courier bag and everything and we thought it was a legitimate ticket.’’
Jenkins said she only realised she may have made a mistake when she called Westpac Stadium yesterday, trying to check details for Ricky’s trip.
They told her the ticket may be invalid. Jenkins said she fears others will also be turned away at the gates. ‘‘There will be hundreds of other people who would’ve bought those tickets.’’
Westpac Stadium chief executive Shane Harmon said they won’t know how many people are implicated by invalid ticket sales until tomorrow night.
‘‘Anyone who purchases from Viagogo is at their own risk,’’ Harmon said. ‘‘You may or may not get in on the night.’’
Some tickets on websites were sold using a duplicated ticket barcode, he said. ‘‘That person is not really going to know until they get to the gate if it’s a scam, or not.’’
As an example, Viagogo sold almost 1000 invalid tickets to All Blacks matches last year, Harmon said.
The Commerce Commission took Viagogo to court last year but this month failed to win an injunction against the ticket reseller.
The commission argued that Viagogo was misleading consumers, enabling invalid concert tickets to be sold to New Zealand buyers and causing around 750 complaints to the commission.
Viagogo was approached for comment. The Dominion Post’s Simon Sweetman. ‘‘These guys may be in their sixties now, but clearly The Rolling Stones love what they do. And we love them for that. There’s no other reason they would work this hard to put on such an amazing show.’’
AC/DC (Westpac Stadium, January 28 and 30, 2010)
‘‘Not bad for a full moon and a nice hot night,’’ police Inspector Mike Coleman said of the 50 arrests – mostly for drunk and disorderly behaviour – during the Aussie hard work legends’ second show.
Inside the stadium, The Dominion Post’s Simon Sweetman described the combined two-gig crowd of around 61,000 as witnessing what ‘‘just might be the world’s last great rock’n’roll group’’.
‘‘Acca Dacca showed if you stick to the knitting – obvious, proud rock songs for obvious, proud fans – it’s always going to work.’’