Earl Spencer’s top seats for charity concert at Albert Hall are touted online for £800
EARL Spencer is at the centre of a charity ticketing scandal after his seats for a concert were touted online.
Princess Diana’s younger brother owns a 12-seat box at the Royal Albert Hall so received free tickets for a Paul Weller gig raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
But the Mail found two of the aristocrat’s seats, which are on the same level as the Queen’s, were being sold online for a total of £835.
Instead of going to the charity, the money would have earned the seller about £600, with the rest taken in fees by the website used to sell the seats.
The tickets were taken off the site yesterday after the Daily Mail tipped off the Royal Albert Hall. Ticket prices for the concert range from £28 to £130.
Earl Spencer, 52, last night insisted he meant to give the tick- ets back to the London venue so they could be sold for charity.
He blamed ‘an aberration by a member of staff who failed to understand this clear instruction’ and said the employee was now under a disciplinary investigation. The Royal Albert Hall hosts a week of charity concerts every year to raise money for children with cancer.
Prime box owners – including Earl Spencer – are entitled to use their seats at some of the gigs instead of them going on sale to the public.
Earl Spencer’s seats for the Paul Weller concert in March were being touted through the resale website Viagogo. They were being traded for £417.50 each. Face value would have been £ 100. Earl Spencer insisted all tickets for his box involving charitable events were routinely returned to the venue so they could be resold for charity.
His spokesman said: ‘He has also given tens of thousands of pounds of the proceeds of other ticket sales to registered charities, of his own volition. Furthermore, he is a supporter of the Teenage Cancer Trust, and gave that charity a successful fundraising evening at his family home, Althorp, about 15 years ago.’
A pair of tickets in Earl Spencer’s box are also on sale for an Eric Clapton concert in May through another site. That concert is not for charity and the tickets are worth £200 each. But they are being sold online for a total of £2,868 – seven times their face value.
The Royal Albert Hall has been criticised in the past for allowing box owners to resell their tickets for profit. The venue is a charity and general charity regulations prevent members from profiteering unreasonably.
Charity Commission chairman William Shawcross has said it is ‘of great concern’ that debenture seat holders dominate the charity’s board while being able to make money from the seats.
But these charity rules clash with a right – enshrined in law – for Royal Albert Hall seat owners to use their tickets as they wish. The leases are now very sought after. A grand tier box like Earl Spencer’s went on sale this week for £2.5million. Referring to the Eric Clapton tickets, his spokesman added: ‘Seats such as Earl Spencer’s are entirely his freehold property, to do with as he wishes.’
A spokesman for Viagogo said its fees cover marketing the tickets and insisted its rules ban people selling tickets to charity events that were originally free.
Kate Collins, director of fundraising and marketing at the Teenage Cancer Trust, said: ‘Unless the Government introduces legislation to regulate the secondary ticketing market, there is nothing we can do to prevent the reselling of our tickets for profit.
‘Many Royal Albert Hall members donate their tickets back to us every year to help young people with cancer. We are very grateful to those members.’
A spokesman for the Charity Commission said: ‘When members of the public buy tickets for charity concerts they have a legitimate expectation that their money will indeed support charities.
‘The surest way to support the Teenage Cancer Trust is to buy tickets for the concerts directly from authorised sources.’
‘There is nothing we can do’