If like me you spent Friday morning trying to buy Stone Roses tickets on the Ticketmaster website, there's a very good chance, like me, you spent the morning faced with this message:
In fact, I was still staring at this frustrating message when I heard via Twitter that tickets had sold out. Meanwhile, over on another Ticketmaster-owned website they were already advertising hundreds of the very same Stone Roses tickets (face value £55) at prices of up to £1,100.
The site, GetMeIn.com, is "an online ticket marketplace where fans can buy and sell live entertainment tickets... at fair market prices". Some of those "fair market prices", being asked by sellers using the site, can be seen in the screengrab (right).
So while Stone Roses fans were trying to buy tickets in good faith from Ticketmaster, hundreds of the tickets they were trying to buy were already being sold on another Ticketmaster property, in some cases with sellers asking for more than ten times face value.
That doesn't seem fair, yet it's a situation which plays out every time a major concert or tour goes on sale. However, Ticketmaster and users of GetMeIn.com are operating entirely within the laws as they stand.
Stone Roses
For me though there can be no suggestion that all of these are indivuals who bought tickets in good faith only to discover - within seconds - that they could no longer make it and are simply trying to recoup face value.
It's hard to imagine anybody would meet these £500-plus asking prices but clearly those reselling tickets - whoever they might be - are keen to push prices as high as possible to see what they can get away with. At the time of writing the average asking price was still around £250 per ticket, from which Ticketmaster would take a healthy £75 commission (set at 25% according to BBC Watchdog).
As such Ticketmaster's commission is far higher in this secondary market than when selling tickets on the main Ticketmaster.co.uk site. In fact, in the above instance, its commission is higher than the face value of the tickets. It's therefore easy to imagine Ticketmaster would be keen to see as many tickets as possible sold via its secondary market.
Clearly all of this leaves a bad taste in the mouth for music fans who were willing to pay the high prices already charged for live music tickets but not willing to compete in such a secondary market. A number of people on Twitter this morning branded the situation "a scandal", "blatant touting" and "disgraceful".
For the record I did get tickets, through a friend. Better still I paid face value but this situation does little to inspire me to join the scrum next time tickets go on sale for such an event. At a time when the music industry is bemoaning lost revenue it seems unthinkable that music fans who actually want to pay for something would be treated in a way I personally, as a consumer and a fan find totally unacceptable.
Well done on eventually getting tickets. Nearly got them via ticketmaster.ie which seemed to cope with the stresses a little better than the .co.uk We got tickets to the credit card payment stage but then the site reported them as sold out. Very disheartening that they were on sites like you mention and ebay etc at ridiculous prices at the same time those who were actually planning on going to the event were still trying to buy them.
At least there won't be this level of scumbaggery when tickets for The Seahorses reunion go on sale, eh?
Posted by: David | Oct 21, 2011 at 14:01
You should see the equally unethical link between Reading Festival and ticket reseller Viagogo.
Promoters are doing no service to the fans by not discouraging these kind of companies, and even striking deals with them in some cases.
Viagogo are "Official Partners" with several organisations who I think should be ashamed of themselves for not protecting their fans and loyal customers.
Posted by: Tom | Oct 21, 2011 at 14:02
Surely the best thing for GetMeIn and all those other sorts of "tout" sites to do is not allow people to advertise tickets for sale to gigs until a defined time after the tickets have gone on sale - like a week or something. It's well cheeky what's happened. I was lucky enough to get tickets - not through tuicketmaster, who, as you say were utter bollocks - but there are a few of my mates who met that SERVICE UNAVAILABLE warning all morning and could quite clearly see tickets being sold on those sites for a much more inflated price. naughty!
Posted by: Stuart | Oct 21, 2011 at 14:06
There should be a rule/law that forces the purchaser to only be allowed to sell the ticket back to the original official vendor at face value (minus an admin fee) - or the ticket becomes void.
Posted by: Ian Beale | Oct 21, 2011 at 14:25
I'm so bummed of at not getting a ticket to see The Roses i'm actually hoping Northside reform....(yeah I know pretty unhappy) then I might get a chance of getting a bunch of tickets all at less than facevalue. Nevermind....shame greedy touts can exploit genuine fans.
Panther
Posted by: Craig Labbett | Oct 21, 2011 at 16:03
With all the fixed phoneline competitions, and shady sales practises I would guess that Ticketmaster sells the tickets to itself and then sells them on at a larger price Via sites like getmein seatwave etc.... I would like to see the list of shareholders in all these companies! I bet they are all the same!
Posted by: Alejandro | Oct 22, 2011 at 01:17
This is an utter scandal.How can the company running the primary market also be the company running the secondary market... HOW ON EARTH CAN THAT BE LEGAL!!?
I'm sure Ticketmaster aren't directing tickets intended for sale on the primary market into this more profitable secondary market but the fact they COULD tells you all you need to know about why Trading Standards or similar should stamp out this pernicious practice which exploits fans and ultimately will harm the industry as a whole. This puts me off trying to buy tickets because I really don't want to be involved in supporting any industry which treats consumers with such obvious contempt.
Posted by: Alex | Oct 22, 2011 at 12:49
There's a rumour that a full tour is about to be announced so don't worry about it too much. I think there will be plenty of opportunity to see them and so the touts will be out of luck. These guys are not reforming for a couple of one off shows, too much money to be made!
Posted by: goseethem | Oct 24, 2011 at 23:36