ebay ticket touts

andyhuk

Hi all, ever wanted tickets to your favourite band, sports fixture or concert but been unable to as they're all sold out? Then turned to ebay for help? Please read the following and let me know your thoughts...

England's cricketeers are taking on Australia in the Ashes this summer. Unfortunately, matches are already sold out for the Ashes and ODI series between July and September, as I discovered the other night when trying to book online. A quick search on ebay under 'ashes tickets' revealed 87 hits where the majority were indeed for Ashes tickets.The prices range from the reasonable to the ridiculous - £360 for two tickets at the third day of the first test at Lord's. Normally you'd expect to pay no more than £80 for the pair - more than four times their original price and the bidding hasn't stopped yet! Out of curiosity, a similar search for U2 tickets reveals an even worse case. 600 items for a search on 'U2 tickets' with even more astronomical mark-ups. Talk about Money Savers, people paying these extortionate prices must have money to burn!

I estimate about 5-10% of these tickets are 'genuine' sales where people have bought tickets and then been unable to attend the event – the rest are purely ticket touts, nothing less. They don't even try to disguise the fact. Is this legal? I'm staggered that some people are willing to pay the elevated prices from these low-life who, if asked their occupation, could accurately reply 'professional tout'. They may call it entrepreneurial, but I call it staggering. I appreciate that the people buying the tickets are perpetuating the market, but I can't help feel that ebay have some obligation to ensure this kind of thing does not happen – surely they can't condone it? How about the government, what's their view?

We all know that ticket touts exist, we see them outside sporting venues and concerts and the like. I'll admit that they may help the unfortunate punter who's a ticket spare or short on the day. However, with the increasing popularity of sites like ebay, the touts have taken this to a whole new level and the implications are far reaching. Last year's Glastonbury festival saw Michael Eavis, the organiser, introduce 'named' tickets to stop exactly this sort of thing from happening – not completely successfully however.

I'm sure fellow money savers would not dream of bowing to these, er, people.
I include the link here to a recent BBC article on ebay, which while touching on tax implications for ebay traders, makes no reference to ticket touts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4274683.stm

Andy.

Midas

Hear, hear!

A few well organised touts are snapping up large amounts of tickets for popular events - causing them to sell out in record time and whipping up the hysteria about something being sold out - and then making a killing selling them on to genuine fans.

In this day and age it shouldn't be so difficult to ensure that only the person who actually bought the tickets can get into the event (perhaps say with a a maximum of 4 friends entering the event at the same time), thus putting an end to mass-touting. Event organisers should offer a full refund to anyone who finds (for whatever reason) that they can't get to an event that they have bought tickets for and then re-sell them. But you rather get the feeling that most event organisers aren't actually that bothered about touting, they just want to shift their ticket allocation as quickly as possible.

andyhuk

Thanks for your thoughts Midas, but is there nobody else out there who feels strongly about this, one way or the other?

pinkfluffybabe

I do feel strongly about it. I think its unfair on genuine fans who want to see an event live, and can't. I would never dream of paying these people the prices they are asking - to be honest, Im not sure I would trust them to actually have the ticket in the first place, as they are not dispatched until the month before the event yet you would have to pay through ebay straight after the sale.

I was lucky enough to get U2 tickets online this year but I know people who didnt. On the morning they went on sale there were literally hundreds on ebay waiting for people to bid. This is wrong. I do think however, that the blame lies with the event organisers/ticket sellers. They should ensure that the people buying the tickets are the people who attend. I know they put limits of 4 on but how do these touts then seem to end up with so many?

It leaves genuine fans angry and disappointed. It is very unfair and prices people out of attending events. It also happens a lot with European football matches (Champions League games etc) when allocations are limited and those outside the ground charge three times the value to desperate fans who have travelled.

I would never do that to someone. If I was ever lucky enough to have a spare ticket, I would sell it to someone who wanted it at the price on the front. It makes a mockery of genuine fanbases and lets these people destroy our enjoyment.

Christine

andy88_2

I'm not an eBay fiend. I did read an article whingeing about this. Tom Waits tickets had rocketed up. Glastonbury ...

Apparently there are people who revenge themselves on this sort of practice by signing up with false names and bidding ludicrous amounts - £10,000 or something, then not paying and leaving negative feedback.

I don't know eBay well enough to know whether such countermeasures add to the problem or will eventually put the touts off.

bridiej

I'm sure Wimbledon tried to do something about this as tickets were being sold for ridiculous amounts for the finals - I think they said that the tickets wouldnt be honoured, but I dont know how they know how to work out who bought from touts, unless you have to take proof of ID?

Fatboy_NSS

I personally don't have a problem with ticket touts. For popular tickets not everyone is able to queue at the box office / keep phoning all day, so the tout is effectively acting as their agent by obtaining the tickets for them and charging a fee for this service.

Touting only exists because there aren't enough tickets available to satisfy demand. Bands could stop the problem of touting on their tours by playing more dates and therefore making more tickets available, but they don't because they gain publicity from having a sell out tour which then helps them sell more albums. Admittedly this logic doesn't work for sporting events as there is a finite number of seats available. However for this type of event promoters could offer a limited number of extra expensive tickets which would mean that people wishing to book late could still get a ticket with the profit going to the promoter rather than a tout.

andyhuk

Fatboy_NSS wrote:

I personally don't have a problem with ticket touts. For popular tickets not everyone is able to queue at the box office / keep phoning all day, so the tout is effectively acting as their agent by obtaining the tickets for them and charging a fee for this service.

Sorry Fatboy, gonna have to disagree with you there - what a nice benevolent, altruistic bunch you make those ticket touts sound! It's not really a question of people booking late; the problem is that the touts have the opportunity to be first in-line; they can sit in front of their computers all day because they know that somewhere out there people will pay them back ten-fold for their troubles!
As long as people are prepared to pay the money, the touts will keep doing the same thing...