Touts cash in by selling Ariana gig tickets for 10 times face value
TOUTS cashing in on Sunday’s concert in aid of victims of the Manchester bombing were yesterday branded ‘vile’ as it emerged they were selling tickets for as much as ten times their face value.
It added insult to injury for the thousands of fans left disappointed after the One Love Manchester event – featuring stars including Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and Coldplay – sold out in minutes.
There was also criticism of those who tried to cash in on the organisers’ offer of free tickets to all those at Grande’s concert at the Manchester Arena on the night of the attack. More than 25,000 applied but just 14,200 were at the concert on May 22.
Tickets for Sunday’s concert at the Emirates Old Trafford cricket ground in Manchester sold out in less than 20 minutes, but almost immediately some were advertised for sale on eBay for as much as £400 – ten times their face value.
Twitter users – many of them using fake names – also offered tickets, with one demanding £250 each when contacted by a Mail reporter posing as a buyer. When challenged as to why they were profiting from an event set up to benefit victims, the vendor cut off communication.
Other Twitter users were quick to condemn those attempting to cash in. Liv Hall wrote: ‘If you sell on One Love Manchester tickets to make a profit you’re the scum of the earth, absolutely sickening.’
Olivia Anna posted: ‘People reselling One Love Manchester tickets are vile human beings. Disgusting.’
Major ticket resale sites Seatwave, Get Me In, Viagogo and Stubhub all pledged to prevent the reselling of tickets on their websites, while eBay insisted it was removing tickets from its site and would block any reported sales.
Some parents of fans who survived the bombing fear that their children face disappointment because of problems with distributing tickets and with some victims still recovering. Nick Lewis, from Cheshire, whose 14-year-old daughter Freya suffered multiple injuries after she was hit by shrapnel that killed her best friend, Nell Jones, described the timing as ‘insensitive’.
In a blog on their school’s website updating classmates on her recovery he wrote that Freya had heard about the concert on television and had found it ‘ distressing’. ‘The concert is a great idea and the support of the artists is fantastic, but the timing so soon after the bombing, in our opinion, is insensitive at best,’ he said.
Lisa Newton, 46, from Derbyshire, whose daughter was in the attack, hoped the show would help her recovery but said she could not get a ticket. She said it was rushed.
Ticketmaster, which is handling admission, has extended the deadline for applicants for free tickets and said it was ‘working around the clock’ to filter out bogus applications. ‘Sadly, over 10,000 unscrupulous applications have been made,’ said a spokesman.