How should ticket fraud be tackled?

If people want to sell tickets on at a profit and others are willing to buy them, so what! It is a free market society driven by supply and demand.

Concert promoters are wasting their time.

All about control again!

I have never been a victim of a ticket scam simply for the reason that I always purchase my tickets through legit sites such as Ticketmaster.

I certainly don't think 'smart chip' bands are the answer because it would mean that if you're unable to go to an event, you cannot even sell the ticket on to a friend. And besides, I am guessing these wrist bands will cost a bucket load more to produce then paper tickets so is this yet another excuse to inflate the price of concert tickets? I wanted to see Michael Buble this summer but tickets are well over £100 per person! Recession anyone?

This is great if it cuts out the ticket touts selling at inflated prices and the forgers. But there must be a refund mechanism for unused tickets, now they are chipped it is simple to record if the ticket went through the barrier or not and give a refund on those that didn't.

On the other hand when is there going to be some legislation on the general rip off sale of tickets. It's worse than a budget airline.
Booking fees - even if you turn up in person and pay cash!
Credit card surcharges.
And worst of all a charge of £2.75 EACH for on-line printing your ticket on your own paper using your own printer and ink, thus SAVING them from generating and posting one to you.

Methinks that this is more a scheme to extract extra money from the punters than protect them from the touts.

If you have bought something then surely you have the right to sell it? If the number of tickets sold to any one buyer is restricted then I do not see what the problem is.

Just who is supposedly losing out here?

The concert promoter who set his ticket price appropriately and sold them all?
The fan who finds he cannot go to a concert after all?
The one who gets a ticket after the concert's sold out?

I've sold tickets on, and I don't think anyone was hurt by it. Back in 1979 tickets to Cardiff Arms Park for rugby internationals were hard to come by, and so when my family was unable to go one of my lecturers had a very broad smile on his face and a couple of happy rugby-loving friends when he told them he'd got tickets for the game! I didn't get any more than I would have done selling them back to the Welsh Rugby Union, but it was nice to bring pleasure to a friend & his mates.

It's a difficult question. Both arguments are equally compelling. People don't want to be ripped off by opportunists. But then people don't want to be straighjacketed into taking these tickets with no chance of return. Perhaps another angle would be to introduce these digital wristbands. With the proviso that it is a refundable ticket that will be bought back by the retailer if someone is unable to attend. Any unsold/returned tickets can be sold either through licensed vendors and/or at the venue. However I notice that for festivals you are already having to provide photograph ID for tickets, to minimise ticket touts, so what happens here? (Its a genuine question I am unaware)

How about not overcharging people so much so it's not as attractive for the fraudsters? Surely 20 or £30 million is enough for a star to have? Do you *really* need to charge your fans so much? The rise of the fake tickets has simply followed the greed of the industry/stars. When the prices were more sensible we did not see this level of fraud. Self-explanatory really.

Let's get Socialist and offer free tickets for everything, paid for out of taxes, of course. Not very practical, perhaps, but such a system would surely see the end of ticket fraud.

Resale should be allowed but perhaps only through a controlled site so that fans aren't ripped off on both sides of the transaction and only sold for face value (plus postage costs). Touts and people who buy tickets purely for resale with no intent of going to the gig at all, who manage to buy masses of tickets to gigs only stop the real fans attending and cash in for themselves. The "service" they provide isn't needed, if they hadn't mass bought tickets in the first place alot of the people buying them would have got tickets in the official sale.

Anything which allows more real fans to go to gigs without paying some one else a hyped premium to do so should be welcomed.

Not everyone has equal and fair access to tickets - on several occaisions I've got through on the phone minutes after tickets go on sale only to find there are only poor seats left - clearly some are put aside for agents etc, that is why you shouldn't be allowed to sell on tickets

stop the touts (including ticket agencies), and legisl;ate to stop rip off 'booking fees', credit card surcharges etc

Last year in Scotland I tried to get tickets for AC-DC, the tickets were sold out in minutes. Almost immediately tickets were on ebay for vastly inflated prices along with excuses such as "I bought 6 by mistake". Of course limit the number of tickets to a maximum of 2 and also only allow ticket sales through licensed outlets. Tickets should only be sold for the retail price. Of course if you are willing to pay tax on any profit.........

The problem that people here are completely ignoring is that touts will often have a crew spam-calling ticket lines for popular gigs as soon as lines open so that they can buy up tickets before genuine fans get a chance. Free market economics should not include an unproductive and pointless middle-man making 500% profit for doing nothing.

Make ALL ticket FREE!

Surely this is more about the inability of those scammed to use the internet correctly than anything else?

I would never buy a ticket from a company that wasn't official or, if I do not know them, I had not investigated to check their ligitimacy first.

As long as the tickets aren't forgeries, what's the problem? If people want to pay stupid sums of money for a ticket bought by someone else, more fool them but that's their choice.

I like to keep my physical tickets, and don't want a digital scheme. Who also wants to bet there will still be booking fees even in the digital age?

Surely it's not the selling on of legit tickets that's the problem. But the selling of FAKE ones?

I wonder how this will work for genuine Corporate Entertainment companies? Until recently my wife ran such a business. She would buy, say, 100 tickets, enhance them with transport, meals, sometimes accommodation and sell the package on - usually to companies wanting to treat their customers. As at the time of purchase there is no way of knowing who will be attending how can some form of wrist band be issued? Perhaps they will have some way of identifying them to the purchaser rather than to the individual? Or maybe this system will not apply to genuine Corporate Hospitality companies?

The vast majority of tickets are now bought using a credit/debit card. When you order your ticket(s) your 16 digit credit/debit card number is your ticket. All you do when you arrive at the venue is swipe the card you paid for the ticket with in the first place, and your in. Its far safer and cheaper than having a paper ticket - and the touts have nothing to sell.

The headline talks of ticket fraud but the article refers to selling on unwanted tickets which is not fraud. Even if there is a covenant in the ticket contract selling the ticket on is not fraud unless there is a deliberate intention to deprive the organiser of sales or cheat someone.

Fraud is the crime of cheating another person which is very different to giving a ticket away because it cannot be used. If there is "reward" for the "gift" then what has that to do with the original vendor?

This is just another example of commercial protectionism and monopoly which should have no place in a free society.

Any attempt to try and curb the touts is a welcome. I'm sick of never being able to see my favourite band because the tickets sell out in moments and then appear on eBay for three times the list price.

Selling tickets on isn't really a big issue, but the rip-off element is

I recently tried to get tickets for Florence and The Machine, in Edinburgh in May. The tickets went on sale 9am Friday morning, and were gone before teatime. The limit was 6 per order max @ face value £18.50 each

A quick Google revealed that ONE website (in Ireland) had over 100 tickets for Edinburgh, and more than 330 for the whole UK leg of the tour. These started at c.£49.00 up to £78. Needless to say I won't be paying those prices

If this one site is doing it you can bet others are too; So anything up to HALF of all tickets are costing fans upwards of 200% more THAT'S the sort of thing that surely MUST be curtailed

I get very frustrated at only being able to buy tickets for concerts where the seating/position is really poor. This is despite booking within in minutes of the ticket lines opening. This must be because vast blocks of tickets are already pre-booked by a number of booking agencies.

Perhaps ALL tickets should be sold by the concert venue only. No vendors, no agencies, no middle man wanting their piece of the pie.

Comments 9 and 11 I totally agree with. Last year I wanted to buy tickets for a gig at a small venue of a band I really wanted to see - my husband checked ebay the night before tickets went on sale and found listings already up saying 'I will have up to 4 tickets for this gig'! I was lucky and was able to buy 2 tickets through the venue website's ticket link - but the gig sold out in less than 10 minutes! Too many of the tickets went to touts. Many other friends and fans were less lucky than me and some did turn to the ebay listings when all other routes failed. I would agree with tightening up controls on ticket resales particularly - how about only allowing cost recovery? Internet auction sites and ticket websites should allow and insist on a photo of the actual ticket(s) on sale with the face value clearly displayed - many tickets also list booking fees etc on the front as well, and ticket purchasers are usually aware of the sizes of fees anyway - plus what it costs for postage so any outrageous inflation would be easily noticeable and those sellers avoided (although unsold/unused tickets are not a good thing either), or forced to reduce prices.

There wouldn't be a problem bar for the stupidity of people paying the prices and the ability to return tickets for refund.
If everyone just stoppped right now and only bought from a genuine re-sellers these touts wouldn't have a business...

We have experience of combating football ticket fraud through vetting all advertisers.

The big problem starts with the promoters, in our case the FA's who insist on the existing ticket distribution method and are unwilling to vet ticket sellers and post a vetted list on their websites.

A vast proportion of tickets end up in the large cash (black) ecconomy simply because this suits the FA's, and the favoured recipients can get rich very quick, which may explain the reluctance of the FA's to use a vetted sales system.

It's the absence of a vetted sales structure that enables the fraud problem, it's the established norm that valid tickets are sold for cash way above face value on the streets and on the web, exactly the right environment for organised crime.

It is a good idea. Weed out the scum that sell on fake tickets and rip poeple off.

Then next they can start dealing with the 'legitimate' ticketing agencies and their rediculous charges and fees. In my mind they are no better than the touts and forgers they just have the law on their side.

Surely you just make it illegal to sell the tickets on for more than their face value and then enforce those laws by prosecuting those that do.

Genuine Corporate Hospitality companies could still be allowed to operate.

I can't see the difference between ticket touts charging an extra premium and ticket agencies charging 'booking fees' or 'service charges'
They are all unproductive middle men as poster 'Custador' points out.

But then that is the 'free market' the 'supply and demand' and 'dog eat dog' 'market forces' the touts aren't doing anything that and property speculators and other sales staff and indeed homeowners (when selling a house) don't do... it is just capitalist society we live in.

In that If you have something that is in short supply then the price goes up. like everything... from tickets to houses however the value of an item is only what someone is willing to pay for it and if people want them so much they will be willing to pay over the odds for them.

Concert, festival theatre etc goers have the power in their own hands if fans weren't so desperate then may be the wouldn't be a market for the tickets

So people can moan about it, they can rant about it but they should face up to the fact that that is the economic model the world runs on.

How about witholding a fixed proportion of the tickets for sale on the door, on the night, in only, no ticket issued? That would severely undermine the resale market.

Having said that, there are always morons prepared to pay several hundred pounds to see the latest craze. Just look at "Lady" Gaga...

There are plenty of comments here saying it's fine to re-sell tickets. I know who posted those. Three guesses ... it's the ticket touts.

This is what we are talking about: you are in the queue at Tescos. Suddenly a tout jumps in front of you and grabs your trolley. They tell you you must pay £100 extra for your groceries. You can't get another trolley because those were the last groceries in the store.

This is what ticket touting is.

They buy them up, then put them on eBay for lots more. I say bring on any system that prevents this. Starve the parasites.

No fan is ever ripped off by a ticket tout charging 100, 200, 300x the face value. They aren't forced to buy the ticket, if its too expensive don't buy it, don't go.
In fact, if you are worried about the price of tickets in general, don't buy, don't go.
There is NO sensible or defendable basis for stopping people selling their tickets on.

If there is a problem with forged tickets then make them harder to copy thats not too difficult, currency is hard to forge (not impossible of course, but hard), so make your tickets the same way they make £50 notes.

Tickets should be electronically sent to The new Digital Biometric passports..Then it is quite simple isnt it...The passport agency could charge a fee, but you would be guaranteed security

When I traveled to France I preordered Hotel accommodation via the internet. When I arrived at the Hotel it was locked and secured with no human presence...Adjacent to the front door was a machine similar to a cashpoint machine...It invited me to insert the credit card that I had paid the hotel booking fee with...I did this, it whirred into action and printed a receipt with my room number and door codes....This procedure could be adapted for the concert venue by using 3g mobile phone technology

#13. At 12:27pm on 25 Mar 2010, The Ghosts of John Galt wrote:
Make ALL ticket FREE!

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And who do you suppose is going to perform for free, what box office and theatre staff are going to work for nothing, and how much do you suppose it costs to run a theatre, just so you can offer tickets for free - it aint gonna happen.

Whilst I do not see anything wrong in tickets being sold or given to someone else if you can't attend, I do detest the people who create Fake tickets - it is just downright despicable.

The ticket agencies just don't like the idea that someone else might be making an even more obscene profit than them.

These agencies are worse than Ryanair for all their add-ons and extras. It's usually impossible to buy a ticket at it's face value because of unavoidable booking fees etc. Like the music industry, there is huge irony when the ticket industry tries to talk about ripoffs.

Anything that stops touts seems like a bonus to me. It seems massively unfair that I can queue for tickets for rugby matches for ages and not get them for the fair retail price, and miss an the match just because I don't have enough money to pay £300 per ticket! Maybe it is just a free market situation, but that doesn't make it FAIR. The two are not the same thing, which is something we appear to have lost sight of.

On the other hand people who legitimately want to return tickets should have the option. I don't object to people selling them on at face value.

Perhaps if tickets weren't such rediculously high prices, then there would be no need for anybody to commit fraud.

From my experience, much of the issue with getting tickets, certainly in the case of rock acts, is started by the promotors and the ticket sellers. Tickets are released for pre-sale to fan-club members, then on pre-sale to registered people and finally to everyone else. By this time, the best tickets have gone and most of the rest too. It then seems that it is those who register who sell the tickets on at vasly inflated prices.
I have no problem with tickets for fan club members, but after that, the tickets should be up for grabs for everyone.

I never understand the hysteria surrounding re-selling tickets at a higher price. Our TV's are filled with programs showing how to buy and sell houses at massive profit and unlike concert tickets houses are pretty much essential. Unless you like communism (in which case I'd suggest you might feel more comfortable living in Cuba, North Korea or Vietnam) its normal in our society for goods in limited supply to be sold at the maximum price the market will pay. If the market reckons a Madonna ticket is worth £1000 then thats what it'll cost.

i used to go to a festival (5 years out of the last 6) i won't this year as each year the price has gone up and this year its too much to justify.

I always went as part of a group and as i was the only one with a credit card i was often the only person who could book the tickets so limiting to 2 tickets would mean we just wouldn't of ever gone.(group was smallest at 6people!)

Also due to this i had on a couple of years a cancellation were someone couldn't afford it or had other unavoidable commitments so it was very useful to be able to sell those tickets to someone else who wanted to go. if i hadn't found anyone i knew i would of put them on ebay or sold them at the gate as the ticket price represented about 35% of the total cost.

The only reason we have touts is that people WILL pay the price they ask if you stopped buying from touts it wouldn't be worth there while and it would stop. you only have yourselves to blame IMHO. supply and demand simple as.

With the current system, only the lucky few (who get through the online waiting queue ballot) rich people who can afford ebay prices, get to go to the good gigs. This is not fair.

We need to introduce glastonbury style tickets - Photo ID, printed on the ticket. Job done. Simple, works, cost effective, no re-selling.

Might work as long as there is a way for genuine fans to be able to pass on to friends etc when they're unable to make it. The resellers should be outlawed - they're just legalised touts. Ticket sales should be limited to 2 per user and there needs to be a limit on the number of events tickets are purchased for in a given time period - this would stop the block booking touts which simply distort the market in their favour.

Quite how these chipped wristbands 'prevent fraud' is not particularly clear. If the wristbands are sent out in advance, then surely the purchaser could still sell them on - provided the genuine chipped wristband is presented at the venue then access will be granted, surely?

Realistically, however, the booking agents need to allow for genuine resale of the tickets that they issue, regardless of the format. Event dates are often released months in advance and there are any number of genuine reasons why a fan might not be able to make the gig nearer the time.

I've been in this position myself several times, and have sold tickets on. However, I make sure I sell the tickets via ethical means - either exchange them on viagogo or list them on an ethical, face-value-only ticket sale site like Scarlet Mist.

Getting tickets when they go on sale is an art - many a Friday morning I've spent hitting 'refresh' at 08:59 in order to get decent seats - and there are other ways of getting tickets legitimately that don't involve inflated tout prices or ludicrous eBay mark-ups. However, the more casual fan doesn't necessarily know about these routes, and so is usually the one who loses out. Maybe sites like viagogo and Scarlet Mist should invest a bit more in marketing themselves outside the usual 'muso' market to reach more people.

I'd be more interested in the government tackling Ticketmaster who are profiteering through the vastly over the top prices they charge for booking a ticket to any show.

The Monopolies and Mergers Commission should be investigating the way that they and Live Nation are now operating a cartel where they can charge whatever add-on charges they want safe in the knowledge that it is almost impossible to get tickets from another source.

I went to a concert recently where you could only buy tickets from Ticketmaster, once the booking fee, on-line printing fee and other charges where added up the tickets had more than doubled in price.

How can this be fair when there is no other way to buy tickets other than from the one, or sometimes two companies for most events ?

"13. At 12:27pm on 25 Mar 2010, The Ghosts of John Galt wrote:
Make ALL ticket FREE!"

What a GREAT IDEA!, then the artists who are no longer making any money from record sales because of illegal downloading will no longer earn any money from live performances EITHER, then there will be no reward or incentive for making any good music AT ALL, let alone the bland sugar-coated manufactured paint-by-numbers karaoke music in the mainstream.

"42. At 1:57pm on 25 Mar 2010, James Dunmore wrote:
With the current system, only the lucky few (who get through the online waiting queue ballot) rich people who can afford ebay prices, get to go to the good gigs. This is not fair."

At present only rich people who can afford Porsche prices get to drive 911's. The rest of us drive what we can afford. The only alternative system is called communism and it doesn't really work.

In any case given what the biggest names in music charge for tickets (£70 to see the Stones) even at 'cover price' its unaffordable for many.

I used to go to gigs all the time, it was quite easy to get tickets through legit sellers and they were generally affordable. These days I could try my very best to be online at the exact moment tickets go on sale and still be told they've sold out less than 30 seconds later. Then unsurprisingly tickets appear on ebay for triple the price!

I was once able to get tickets to see Coldplay pre-sale as I was a member of the fan club. My seat turned out to be as far away from the stage as you could get, with the stage only half visible because of a huge pillar in front of us. Lovely!

Agree with number 1.

It's OK to sell antiques/houses/cars on at inflated prices. (There are even TV programs telling you how to do it).

But not concert tickets.

How can that be fair?


As long as everyone has the same opportunity to buy them, then there is no problem. It's a free market economy.

31. At 1:30pm on 25 Mar 2010, EscapedReplicant wrote:
There are plenty of comments here saying it's fine to re-sell tickets. I know who posted those. Three guesses ... it's the ticket touts.

This is what we are talking about: you are in the queue at Tescos. Suddenly a tout jumps in front of you and grabs your trolley. They tell you you must pay £100 extra for your groceries. You can't get another trolley because those were the last groceries in the store.

This is what ticket touting is.

They buy them up, then put them on eBay for lots more. I say bring on any system that prevents this. Starve the parasites.

---------------------------------------------------------------

It's not the same at all - in your situation, you get another trolley and go round again.

It's more like this - someone has a painting you really want. There are no others for sale. You will have to compete with others to buy it at the highest price you are willing to pay.

This is what happens at fine art auctions and they are perfectly legal and acceptable.

I don't object to people selling on tickets if they originally bought them fully intending to attend an event.

What REALLY winds me up are the touts that make a living out of buying up as many tickets as they can for popular events, then putting them up for sale at three times the face value literally 10 minutes later! That has got to stop or, yet again, the rich get what they want and the poor miss out.

People talk about rights and free markets and being controlled, but this wouldn't be an issue if people didn't behave so selfishly! If customers can't be trusted to purchase tickets fairly, then we need controls like this.

I have no sympathy for people buying so called "cheap tickets". They've been obviously forged. Don't be so gullible in the first place.

The problem is, too many people will buy their full quota of tickets from legitimate sites purely to sell them on at a profit - this means there are less tickets for legitimate fans to buy.

I've recently bought tickets for Muse in Madrid and Rage Against the Machine's free gig at Finsbury Park. Both use different techniques to prevent touting, which I think can be successful. For the Muse tickets, I need to pick them up at the venue with the card used to make the booking and ID; for the Rage tickets I had to register in advance with a photo and my postcode.

Given the amount that sites such as Ticketmaster charge for booking fees, surely there should be an element of responsibility with them to prevent touting - tickets for Bon Jovi had a booking fee of £8 per ticket, plus a transaction fee of £4.80, which is ridiculous.

Buying, selling and trading is allowed in the free market, or is that another act of freedom abolished by Brown?

It's annoying when you find out someone has bought over fifty tickets just to sell them on at an extortionate price, maybe meaning you don't get a ticket yourself.

At the same time though...people aren't stealing them, they are buying them, and thus making a profit...pretty clever really. Isn't that just business? Like every single other thing that can be bought, it gets sold for more than it's worth so someone can make some cash! The economy should be worshipping them really, keeping the cycle going and all that jazz.

Nobody has suggested how you are going to differentiate (and cater for) tickets bought as a present or by a credit card holder for a friend etc. and touted tickets. This new idea won't do it.

As for swiping you credit card to get in, this has some major advantages. If you don't swipe, say half an hour before the gig starts, you don't get charged (payment on delivery) and your place goes up for grabs as door sales. However, in the cases cited above, would the card holder be willing to lend their card for the evening? Probably the idea of photo ID tickets is the best bet so far.

It is the duty of the buyer to buy from a reputable source. It should be the duty of the seller to sell reputably.
The failure here is clearly - the seller.
“I want 200 tickets for the x concert!” This is unlikely to be a chap/girl taking a few buddies to a gig! This is a tout. Maybe you can tell because it is the same credit card as yesterdays 200 for a different concert! Do not sell in blocks of over say 10 problem solved. Not a microchip in sight! Just common sense! Is that still legal in this country?

Ticket touts can be put out of business very easily: Just don't pay the prices they're asking! After the date of the event, they will be left with so many worthless pieces of paper.

However, for this to work requires for people to be prepared to bleed when their neighbour is cut; behaviour that seems to have gone out of fashion lately. People would rather pay extortionate prices to attend a concert, than miss it and help drive another scumbag out of business.

Of course fans should be allowed to sell on tickets. The situation which needs addressing is that, with the way tickets are now sold, fans don't get hold of the tickets in the first place hence the vast profits for ticket touts.

Ticket touting is a disgrace and should of been dealt with years ago. I was looking to buy tickets to see a big band from the 70's who are playing at my local venue. The Tickets sold out in mintues, yet when I go onto ebay I find pages upon pages of these tickets being sold by people with no intention of ever going to this gig.

All these tickets were available for twice the price and some of sellers were based on the other side of the U.K. I don't see why I should have to pay twice to support people who don't work and have the time to spend buying tickets when I start work.

I agree with this process of some sort of entry requirements at the door. For it to work the promoters need to offer a sellback option which refunds the original buyer and passes the ticket onto someone in a queue. With where we are at with technology, it can't be hard.

55. "It's annoying when you find out someone has bought over fifty tickets just to sell them on at an extortionate price, maybe meaning you don't get a ticket yourself."

It's annoying, yes, but I'm not sure it's 'wrong'.

If people weren't buying the tickets at the extortionate prices, then people wouldn't buy them in bulk. So, obviously some people think they are worth that price.

If you don't like companies like TicketMaster etc, then don't use them. If you don't get to see a concert, well, big deal, I'm pretty sure that's not fatal. If enough people don't use them them either they'll go out of business, or reduce the number of tickets they buy, or reduce their prices.

On the other hand, forged tickets are more of a problem. But, then, I'd never buy a ticket from an unofficial source because of the risk of forgeries. I suppose you deserve what you get if you do.

31. "This is what we are talking about: you are in the queue at Tescos. Suddenly a tout jumps in front of you and grabs your trolley. They tell you you must pay £100 extra for your groceries. You can't get another trolley because those were the last groceries in the store.

This is what ticket touting is."

Not really. That's food - food is important.

Tickets to see a concert aren't quite as important, believe it or not.

Just don't go. Your favourite band will still get their money, so don't worry about that.

Also, in your analogy, remember the tout has to PAY for your groceries before they ask you to pay £100 extra. So, if you just walk away, the tout loses out - if enough people walk away, they'll be out of business.

Without a doubt the system needs to be improved. Tickets appearing on auction sites minutes after going on sale are ridiculous.

However, I would be concern about your ability to genuinely sell tickets you could no longer use.

Perhaps the companies should agree on a returns system so they only way tickets could be re-sold is via official channels. Combined with a smart ticket is could get rid of touts and they could make more money in the process. What's stopping them?

ID Cards are the answer!

ID Cards are the answer to everything ... terrorism, fraud, identity, measles, New Labour.

One flick and you're done!

Where would we be without the tout or ''local fixer''.

Funny isn't it ??
Internet sales lead to massive applications for tickets from touts. Now the answer is... another new technology.

[Second-hand(geddit?)Celebrity ''tagged'' wristbands sell well on E-Bay. Pays the ticket and all expenses darling.]

1000 tickets face value (£30)=£30,000 pounds to the promoter.
900 tickets at face value, plus 100 tickets at £100=£37,000.
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1000 tickets at the new ''tout proof'' price,say £34.50=£34,500.
less additional cost of new techology say no more than,£2,000=

£2,500 increase in revenue for the promoter.

Will any of these new ''dogital wristbands'' sell for less than previous concert prices ?? I.E. in introducing this new technology will the promoter take a cut in revenue ???
Do pigs fly ??? Do Chancellors mention anything about taxes...???

Just who is the ''tout'' and who is the ''promoter'' ???

My understanding is that Ticket touting is illegal, it just not enforced. If there was the will to tackle the problem it could be, but there isn't as the cost to police is too prohibitive.
I think the big problem now is that as so many people have access to the internet tickets go a lot quicker than they used to. 5 years ago you could be guaranteed to get tickets via the internet on the day of sale, but now you need to have sites open to all the ticket agencies, continually refresh and hope one connects.
I do find that some tickets are held back, so that tickets do come available even after they have officially sold out. I think ticketmaster and seetickets both do this, to try and tackle touting. I got tickets for V fest a couple years ago two weeks before the event, and tickets for U2, despite claims that they had sold out within an hour.

I should have added that tickets often go on presale, so it is a matter of finding out when. Usually fan club members can buy tickets a day or so before they go on general sale, some charge you a fee to be a member, but a lot don't. I for example signed up to the Peter Kay Website, and had the opportunity to buy tickets a day early but choose not to.
Also the Arenas often have members pages which you can sign up that give you presale.
One of the best sites for getting yourself at the front of queue is 'Beat the Touts' as this site tells you when tickets are going on sale and in some cases whether there is a presale and how to access it.

How should ticket fraud be tackled? Long prison sentences for those who commit the fraud.

It should really be pretty easy to spot the touts and blacklist them.

Don't tickets often have a 'no resale' clause? If so, the venues/operators should be checking sites like Ebay and cancelling any tickets up for resale.

Surely the technology exists?

''How to beat the ticket tout (Part II)''.??

Erm,...all tickets to be sold at the door, on the night ???

[Whistle,Wink,'Weander'.]

(''Weander'':
1:An upside down meander...
2:E.G.~, Serpiginous wave, inverted from original
3:w not m,
4:m not w.
5:Chinese Whisper in reverse, inverted. E.G. wow mom, )]

Those, who do this ticket, fruad evil.... crime, should be made an example of, what they do cause heartache, to thousands, if not millions. They should go to jail & the money made from this theft, should be given to those they have stolen from! As it has now got 'out of hand', they should also not be allowed to sell tickets on either.I know people will always want to buy them, then that's the risk they take, they wont be able to complain when they, one day, have a fake ticket! Make it law on all FOOLS day, for only a fool would want to be ripped off, paying hundreds over the ticket price.

All I can say is that I will not want even a free ticket to all these dreadful concerts!

Because people are being ripped off by the football stadiums

Concert promoters have a duty to fans to workout a trustworthy scheme for the punters.
Mind you, some people who buy tickets are SO DUMB...beleiving that the world is full of nice, cuddly, honest people and guess what!!!....... I CAN go to the ball!!.... Tickets should only be available through a given number of companies....(told to the public weeks before the tickets come on sale) say 10....each with a number. Punters are then absolutely sure that if a companiy comes along who do not have a number etc.... well you know they are dud. In the meantime get up early and only buy through legitimate, trustworthy sites.

In general I'm in favour of anything which prevents touts getting their hands on good tickets and then selling on at an inflated prices to the kind of fans who can't be bothered to find out when a band is touring, when the tickets go on sale but do have large amouts of spare cash to get a last minute double or triple the price ticket.

For the festivals - there should be some way of returning unused tickets for a partial refund. Which is why, I guess, some web sites now offer ticket insurance. Not worth thinking about for a £20 ticket, but with 4 top price tickets for e.g. Lady GaGa being ~£1000 maybe worth taking out for the really big purchases.

#57 - except if you buy 10 tickets 20 times you've still got 200 tickets. Use different credit cards and your system falls down.

Unfortunately it's not just done on the internet :(
When I was at College a couple of years ago there was a guy who had 2 tickets for Leeds Festival but he 'couldn't go' and if anyone wanted to buy the tickets off him he just needed a £25 deposit per ticket.

I think he must have had about 20 odd people give him a deposit for each ticket.

So £25 x 2 = £50 £50 x 20 = £1,000

Funnily enough I bumped into him at Leeds, and he never did go back to College the next year

Nobody is forced to purchase tickets from touts.

If you do then that's your problem - whether to pay a lot or miss out on going. The only reason these companies want to restrict free trade is the typical "wah! wah! wah! We are missing out on making even more money".

Limiting card transactions is a good step forward in my mind; i know that it is 2 per card for some festivals this year and whilst yes, it is a pain if you are planning on going in large groups, all it means is a bit more organisation if you want to buy on the day.

I bought my Leeds ticket off of ebay last year for the exact cost of the face value a week before the weekend started. My friend bought hers a month in advance for almost 50 pounds more than the face value. I think beating the touts means that you have to get savvy yourself, if you think something is going to be popular and you want to go for a particular price, get ready to spend a bit of time fighting to go!

And I agree with all the comments; if the price is too high, then don't go. And for what it's worth, if we're going to talk about the issue of paying extortionate prices, maybe the bands themselves could come down a peg or two and realise that what they are charging is obscene. Aerosmith? 106 pounds for a seat in the summer? No thanks.

I have no objection to replacing paper tickets with "smart" tickets as long as the purchaser is aware of the restrictions. Perhaps the vendor should be required to buy tickets back from the original purchaser at the original price at the purchaser's request? Otherwise, if you don't like the conditions of the purchase, Don't Purchase the ticket!

It is important that artists have control over the terms of the tickets they offer for sale. Hostile middlemen are most unwelcome by both artists and audience.

I often hear the phrase ticket touts - an unwarranted derogatory term. If someone has legally obtained a ticket/tickets for an event and wants to sell it/them for a higher price - why not? No is forced to buy at the higher price. We operate a market economy where people buy all sorts of things hoping to sell at a profit (sometimes a huge profit) if there is a demand. Oddly we never hear the phrases housing touts,art-work touts,stocks and shares touts,antiques touts,and yet all these and many other things are bought and sold quite legally for a profit by speculators. If tickets are counterfeit or stolen or obtained fraudulently then by all means the sellers ahould be prosecuted. If not they should just be regarded as traders like everyone else and left to get on with their business.

Do what Glastonbury Festival does, make all buyers register with a photo and only able to buy tickets for registered people. Photos are printed on the watermarked and hologrammed tickets. That will stop agencies and e-bayer touts buying masses of tickets to sell on at a huge mark-up and allow real gig-goers the chance to get tickets direct. It doesn't take a huge amount of tech or expense to do this.

Criminals find ways round everything....

Set a limit to 4 per person buying, photo ID printing on the ticket and spec between adult and children and the public should stop buying off touts for around year then they will disappear as well if they buy tickets and don't sell em but people won't take this on board they will just blame the touts and take no responsibility

Reselling concert tickets, unlike football tickets, is not illegal. It may be contrary to the terms and conditions of buying the ticket that they must not be resold - but such clauses are arguably illegal as restraint of trade. Two things which might be illegal are trading tickets in the street without a traders' licence, and not declaring profits for taxation purposes.

A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to go to a festival at the last minute. Through eBay I found someone who had a ticket but was unable to go. A short drive and exchange of notes later - everyone was happy. What's the problem?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I like this idea, but there are those who buy tickets to concerts/events/etc who suddenly cannot attend for reasons that pop up later, and I believe they should be allowed to resell their tickets -- at cost. In order to do this, I think the ticketing agency should allow the purchaser to resell through them (or whoever they officially designate), BUT only allow re-sales to be priced at what it originally cost, AND NOT charge the reseller a ridiculous amount of fees to do it.

"Through eBay I found someone who had a ticket but was unable to go. A short drive and exchange of notes later - everyone was happy. What's the problem?"

Corporate greed, as usual. They love the idea of wasted tickets, they got a sale but don't have to provide the resources.

The same corporations, by the way, that are striving to destroy the secondhand games market and would love to be able to get the sale of unwanted CD's and DVD's banned.

We note a rather depressing lack of morality in some of the postings...........

It will not work, because these scamsters sell what they do not have....... and there are too many gullible souls out there........

does this mean the cost goes up because you will have to top up for everything else on the site..
Next you will have a chip and pin just to go into the toilet..

In everything else, the government supports the "free market". How is this different? Not a chum of the establishment involved, is there?

Uk racecourses have been using an anti-fraud ticket system for years, it is simple cheap and protects racecourses and customers - it even allows then to sell on their tickets if they decide not to use them.

Wouldn't it be easier for companies like this to use an existing system instead of re-inventing the wheel and making concert tickets even more expensive than they are now!

Personally I have both bought tickets off so-called touts and have also sold unwanted tickets, and hence been a tout. I feel if you buy a ticket it then becomes your property to utilise or sell as you choose. If agencies want to prevent big-time touts then just limit the number of tickets sold to say 6 or some other technique to make it more difficult. But I think touts do offer a service. If I leave it late to buy tickets, that's my loss. If I then have the option to buy from a tout then I make a decision how much I'm prepared to pay. If I accept the price then I'm happy, the tout is happy, the promoter is happy (as the ticket was sold in the first place). So what's the problem? The only thing which would be a problem would be if people bought tickets from touts in good faith and they were forges or something like that. Also, a bigger problem with tickets is the rip-off fees for booking charges, postage etc, usually adding a good £6 or so to face-value.

If they were cheaper in the first place, there wouldn't be this whole black market for tickets. Promoters are purposely keeping the prices high to maximise their returns which I suppose is fair enough but then they shouldn't be too shocked when fake tickets appear.

It is easy really. Sell tickets to a named person. If that named person cannot use the tickets then they should be allowed a 100% refund of money paid.

On arrival at the function the person arriving should provide valid photo Id. There are loads of good technologies to prevent fake tickets. Anyway if someone buys a fake ticket they have only themselves to blame.

As to Touts helping people when there is a shortage of tickets - what total nonsense. It is people like the touts who buy tickets that they do not intend to use who cause the problem in the first place.

#31

You can call me any names you want EscapedReplicant. It just demonstrates your ignorance.

You are talking supply and demand which is why you are prepared to fork out your hard earned cash on whatever floats your boat. If someone is ahead of you in the queue then that is life. No one asks you to pay "over the odds" even in Tesco. You do it because you choose to.

Thr whole thing has turned into a vast money making insustry. The very first gig I ever went to was Black Sabbath at the Cardiff Capitol Theatre in 1975 - the tickets went on Sale on a cold Sunday morning at the actual venue at about 10:00am a few months before. I turned up at 7:30 to be greeted by a queue several hundred long, but queue'd up all the same & eventually got my ticket (along with a bit on banter with everyone in the queue). I can't remember the actual cost, but it was less than £2.00

Now, one has to go online or phone some number. There's a choice for premium rate seats, which can cost hundreds of pounds. My wife & I would have liked to see Paul Rodgers & Bad Company at the Cardiff CIA, but the cost simply put us off. By the way, the premium seats didn't seem to offer much in the way of anything premier. You got a glossy poster of the band, a better seat, and that was it! At least when Wagners Ring Cycle was performed at the Millennium Centre a few years ago the top seats got to include champagne with the cast afterwards.

Has anyone from Live Nation been into a teenager's room recently? How much of their room is generally covered in gig tickets? That little scrap of paper is worth more to a teenager as a memento than the merchandise - in such a materialistic society, I think that's quite remarkable.

Tickets for anything should only be allowed by certificated companies nominated by the event organisers with all the security needed to stop scammers.No tickets should be allowed to be touted on.