Punters pay through nose after rogue sites snap up concert briefs
BY MARK McGIVERN m.mcgivern@dailyrecord.co.uk SCOTLAND’S biggest ticket tout Andrew Newman has joined a feeding frenzy of punters’ cash after a major summer gig teamed up with rogue site StubHub to sell its briefs.
The Capital FM Summertime Ball are using StubHub and Ticketmaster as its primary ticket selling agents but demanded a strict ban on the resale of tickets.
However, within hours of the London gig – which features Shawn Mendes, Charlie Puth, Camila Cabello and Rudimental – being announced, thousands of briefs were available at hiked up prices on the secondary market.
Despite knowing that the tickets were not to be sold on, StubHub allowed Newman’s North Financial Group to list more than 100 of them on their site.
Rival site Get Me In! – owned by Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation – also got in on the act.
They listed more than 1000 tickets on top of those they have already sold, generating massive commissions by ripping off fans for the event.
The resale sites failed to stipulate that Under 12s would be denied entry to the Wembley pitch – a breach of the law.
We told last year how Linlithgow-based businessman Newman used masses of credit cards to hoodwink ticketing systems into releasing tickets by the hundred.
The supertout has earned more than £3million in six years.
Campaigner Adam Webb, of the FanFair Alliance, said: “I’d love to hear StubHub’s justification for opening their doors to a dedicated ticket tout like Andrew Newman.
“It’s outrageous. This is only weeks after they made public pledges to clean up their act.”
A StubHub spokeswoman said: “For this event, the average ticket price for a resold ticket on StubHub is £84.
“We firmly believe in the right to resell your tickets if you are unable to attend an event and StubHub provides a safe way for fans to do this.”
After the Record inquiry, the site adjusted their listings to make the age restriction clear.
Get Me In! did not reply to our request for comment.