Sheeran fury as his ‘£75 charity concert tickets touted for £7k’

ED SHEERAN has decided to clamp down on ticket resellers after spotting seats at his concerts being resold for ‘obscene’ prices, a court heard yesterday.

The singer’s manager told a fraud jury that they saw £75 tickets for a charity gig advertised for £7,000 on the resale website Viagogo.

Stuart Camp was speaking at Leeds Crown Court in the trial of online ticket ‘touts’ Peter Hunter, 51, and David Smith, 56, who traded under the company names Ticket Wiz and BZZ.

They used computer software to pose as multiple individuals to bulk-buy tickets for concerts, reselling them almost immediately to fans, it is alleged. Mr Camp said Sheeran’s 2017-18 Divide world tour was the biggest of all time, playing to nine million fans at 260 concerts. He said tickets went on sale on the primary ticketing sites such as Ticketmaster for £75 and £50. ‘Our tickets are cheaper than anyone else who operates at that level,’ he added.

But he said in March 2017 he saw tickets to the Teenage Cancer Trust gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall advertised online for £7,000. Sheeran, pictured, played the gig for free. ‘The tickets were an obscene high price,’ Mr Camp said.

He said Sheeran, 28, and his management company decided to come down ‘really hard’ on resale sites.

They wrote to the major sites, warning them that resold tickets would be void.

Only Viagogo continued to resell Sheeran tickets. Shocked fans with invalid tickets had to re-buy them at the gigs at face value.

The trial has heard that when Sheeran tickets went on sale at 10am on July 8, 2017, Hunter, Smith and BZZ staff bought 1,061 tickets.

The most expensive tickets for the Manchester gig were £75 but Hunter and Smith, of north London, were accused of offering them for sale on Viagogo for £280 each.

Both men deny fraudulent trading and possessing an article for fraud.

The trial continues.