TOUTS £1M QUIDS RICH Harry Potter play tickets on sale at up to £5k
GREEDY touts will rake in at least £1million selling Harry Potter tickets at rip-off prices.
Secondary ticketing sites used by the scalpers are already advertising theatre seats for up to £5,000.
One StubHub seller wanted £4,999 per ticket for a £65 front-row view of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on April 8 next year, but prices of up to £1,000 are common.
On eBay, tickets go for more than £ 600 and a look at the Viagogo site for next month alone shows they’ve got £40,000 worth of seats up for sale.
PROFIT
Scalpers have already siphoned off a huge chunk of 250,000 recently- released £ 15 to £ 70 tickets for the two-part show.
Expert Reg Walker, who runs Iridium Security, said: “I’d say £ 1mil lion is a conservative figure. Touts have probably harvested 20% of available tickets. If they only sell them at a £20 profit, they’ve made a million.”
The Sunday Mirror’s Out The Tou t s campaign is calling for a clamp down on touts. The Palace Theatre in the West End in London is fighting back, turning away 60 Potter fans since the June 6 opening. A spokesman said: “We continue to track down touts and refuse entry to anyone knowingly buying a ticket from a tout through the secondary market.” Anyone turned away at the theatre is given a refusal of entry letter so they can contact sellers for a refund, guaranteed on some sites. Get Me In!, Seatwave, StubHub and Viagogo are all being probed by the Competition and Markets Authority.
MP Sharon Hodgson, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Ticket Abuse, said: “Tickets are being resold at the astronomical price of £4,999, a 7,590 per cent mark-up, on platforms such as StubHub.”
She is backing a report by Professor Michael Waterson calling for greater enforcement of consumer laws and £5,000 fines for offending websites.
Protesters are calling for a Commons debate, here: petition. parliament.uk/petitions/128969