Tout of order...
Sick touts flog them for £1k
TWISTED touts are demanding £1,000 for tickets to Ariana Grande’s sell-out Manchester benefit concert on Sunday.
TWISTED touts are demanding £1,000 for tickets to the benefit concert for Manchester bombing victims.
The gig, featuring Ariana Grande and a host of other pop stars, was officially sold out within six minutes.
But moments later touts started offering £40 tickets for up to 25 times their face value on the internet.
While proceeds from official sales will go to the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund, huge profits from illicit resales will end up in touts’ pockets.
Fans branded their actions “disgusting” and “vile”.
One said: “How can these people live with themselves. It’s blood money.’’
Another said: “They’re stealing from the victims of a terrorist – pretty sick.’’
About 80% of the 21,000 fans who were at Ariana’s Manchester Arena gig when suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up, killing 22 people, have accepted free passes to Sunday’s concert at Manchester’s Old Trafford cricket ground.
The rest of the 50,000 tickets were sold on a first-come, first-served basis.
However, more than 10,000 people applied for free tickets despite not attending Ariana’s gig last week, the official ticketing company has said.
A spokesman for Ticketmaster said: “Sadly, over 10,000 unscrupulous applications have been made.’’
One tout offered to meet a journalist in a back alley in Manchester to sell him two tickets for £1,000 each.
Another tout said he had tickets at £500 each.
Tickets also appeared on eBay for up to £500 before the adverts were removed by the auction site.
An eBay spokesman said a team were doing “manual sweeps” to block ads.
He added: “We also aren’t allowing the sale of any item which profits in any way from the tragedy in Manchester.’’