Ticket giant rip-off row over Collins’ gig
TICKETMASTER has been accused of profiteering by potentially pocketing more than £600 on tickets sold by touts for Phil Collins concerts.
Seats for the star’s tour sold out on Ticketmaster in seconds last month, with many booked by touts who sell them on for inflated prices.
Ticketmaster’s website now redirects fans to a re-selling website it owns called Get Me In! where the seats – originally priced at £55 to £175 – sell for up to £2,200.
The firm then takes huge cuts on the mark-ups for tickets. The Daily Mail has found for each ticket sold for £2,200 – the highest on offer – the company claims £611.59.
MPs accused Ticketmaster of ‘manipulating’ the market, saying the firm must ‘come clean’ and put fans before profit.
The firm is expected to be hauled before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee.
Collins, 65, is coming out of retirement with a five-night residency at the Royal Albert Hall in June. He will then play two dates in Paris and two in Cologne as part of his Not Dead Yet tour. The terms and conditions show Get Me In! takes a 10 per cent cut from the seller.
It then adds 15 per cent of the full sale price plus VAT as a processing fee the buyer has to pay. Tickets sent out to UK addresses incur another £10.57 delivery fee from the buyer.
So for £2,200 Phil Collins tickets – in the front row for the Friday night gig – the seller would make £2,000, Get Me In! would take £611.59 and the buyer would pay a total of £2,611.59.
The seller of these tickets is not known, as Get Me In! protects their identities.
Tory MP Nigel Adams, who sits on the committee, said last night: ‘People will ask questions as to the conflict of interest with Ticketmaster earning secondary ticketing sites. Genuine fans are missing out.’
Labour MP Sharon Hodgson, of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, said: ‘There are questions that need to be answered by Ticketmaster about the relationship between the two branches of their business. Ticketmaster needs to be coming clean about this whole operation and be seen to be doing much more to stop the abuse.’
Warwick University’s Professor Michael Waterson, who wrote a government review this year calling for prosecution of touts, said: ‘It is not in Ticketmaster’s interest to crack down on touts.’
A petition to enforce tough sanctions on resale websites and require resellers to reveal their identities has more than 53,000 signatures.
Matt Piercy wrote on Twitter: ‘Two hours after Ticketmaster sells out of Phil Collins tickets, 1,300 tickets on Get Me In! (owned by @Ticketmaster) at inflated prices. Corrupt.’
Latest accounts report Get Me In! made £2.5million profit over the past two years. However, it paid no tax in either of the years. It is owned the Ticketmaster group, whose ultimate parent is US firm Live Nation Entertainment.
Ticketmaster said it was ‘committed to the overall ticket buying process to ensure artists get tickets into the hands of fans’. Collins declined to comment.