SECONDARY SITES CRACKDOWN CALL STUB OUT THE TOUTS
IT SHOULD be easy. All you want to do is to buy a ticket to see your favourite band.
But from the first click of your mouse in your quest to secure a ticket, you will be exposed to any number of touts, profiteers and spivs determined to exploit you and maximise their return at your expense.
The ticketing business is broken beyond repair and it is one of the biggest consumer scandals we face in this country.
It is a business model built to maximise profits and exploit its consumer base.
It is a giant, all-consuming, rip-off machine that exists from artist management and promoter level all the way down to fans.
In 2010, the largest music promoters in the world, Live Nation, bought the largest ticket agency, Ticketmaster, who own two of the biggest secondary sites where the touts do their business.
It is a model that works in perfect partnership and everyone gets a cut.
Live Nation ensure the venues use Ticketmaster to sell tickets for their artists.
Touts hoover up the tickets and they are then put on sale at hugely inflated prices on secondary sites owned by Live Nation.
Google are incentivised to promote the secondary sites by placing them at the top of their searches.
The touts get their hit, Google get a share and Ticketmaster/Live Nation secure their secondary cut.
Last year, Live Nation raked in more than a billion pounds from their secondary sites alone.
My attention to this was alerted when my old band Runrig put tickets on sale for their final show at Stirling Castle. Within minutes, my inbox was full of messages from angry fans who had
tried to get tickets.
Twelve minutes after tickets went on sale on Ticketmaster, they were available on their secondary site GetMeIn! – at four times the face value.
Runrig did everything possible to spare their fans but it is almost impossible to evade the touts.
Given Government inaction, it
has been left to artists to try to develop solutions to protect their fans from these parasites.
Tough terms and conditions are now put on tickets by bands to try to keep them out of the secondary market.
But it shouldn’t be down to musicians to protect the public in consumer affairs. It’s the job of the Government. And they have been painfully slow to respond.
They have now banned the use of “bots” that hoover up tickets and they have at last started to ensure that recalcitrant secondary companies comply with existing law. The Competition and Markets Authority have put three of the major secondary ticketing websites – SeatWave, GetMeIn! and StubHub – on notice.
The biggest culprits Viagogo have failed to respond. They must be driven out of business.
The touts, though, stay one step ahead and with the cover of the promoters and others at the top of the music business tree, their spiral of misery continues.
The Fan Fair Alliance show fans are no longer prepared to put up with the rip-off.
We have to reclaim the music. The Government can rid us of these parasites. They must act now.