By Andy McCue, 9 November 2004 15:48
NEWS The UK's leading music concert arenas are calling for eBay to take action over the increased number of ticket touts and rogue sellers using the online auction site.
Touts buying huge blocks of tickets for popular events such as Glastonbury and other high profile music concerts that quickly sell out are increasingly using eBay to sell the tickets on at higher prices.
Peter Tudor, director of sales and marketing at Wembley Arena, told silicon.com that the practice is harming the music industry with one of the main problems being that often the concert appears to be sold out when it is not.
"Touts cause events to sell out quickly but it is false demand," he said.
He claims the touts then use eBay because it is easier to offload higher volumes of tickets, which allows them to move off the streets and onto the relative anonymity of the web.
"Touts bored of standing outside in the venue in the rain now set up a website," he said.
Fraudsters who sell the same concert ticket to several eBay bidders and tell them to collect from the ticket office are also causing a problem for venues. Tudor said it is left for venues to tell people who may have paid thousands of pounds, as happened with a recent Madonna concert, that there are in fact no tickets for them.
Tudor also heads up the National Arenas Association, which represents 18 other UK venues, and he said there is a groundswell of opinion among them that the problem needs to be tackled.
"It is something we as a music industry have to deal with," he said.
Manually policing individual eBay auctions in order to cancel tickets being sold is too time-consuming and so the venues and promoters are looking to put pressure on eBay to alter its policies on these auctions, Tudor said.
But eBay claims its existing auction policies provide enough protection for buyers and also allow ticket promoters the opportunity to get illegal listings removed.
A statement issued by the company said: "Promoters can contact sellers directly through the site and ask that listings are removed if contracts have been breached. Moreover, if the promoters obtain a court order or an injunction against any seller, eBay will always act in accordance with any court order. Ticket promoters should get in touch with eBay with any concerns."
Comments
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1. anonymous
Wembley etc should not sell to touts in the first place. Blocks of tickets should only be sold to registered dealers. Wembley should keep its own house in order before blaming Ebay.
Plus anyone who pays thousands for a ticket without checking deserves all they "don't get"
2. Diarmuid Mallon
This is different to T*cketM*ster how?
These days all the tickets, or at least the best ones are sold on to resellers. They then add enormous mark-ups for handling fees etc.
The last time I used them I was charged £5 per ticket, and some other charge on top of that. Compare than from when I booked tickets directly at a regional theatre, and they apologised for adding 50p to cover the stamp and envelope!
So let worry about the resellers who do this to 99% of tickets sold, rather than the 1% on ebay
3. simon
I think they're very cheeky to try and shift blame on to ebay. They shouldn't sell large quantities of tickets in the first place. This is no different to the ticket shops, so are they going to try and close those too?
Fraudsters should be prosecuted of course, but if other people want to sell tickets on ebay then i see it as no more than a normal business - buy low sell higher... everyone's been doing it since commerce existed !
4. Steve Ringham
Damned if you do, damned if you don't!
I'm a regular gig-goer, about 20 gigs and festivals a year. And I am fed up with the traditional ticket agencies, the touts, the venues, promoters AND e-bay!
Ticket agencies; because a ticket is never sold at face-value
Venues; for oppressive security and bad beer (Wembley is one of the worst I know - on both counts!)
Promoters; for picking crap venues
E-bay; for not being able to tell the difference between a regular punter (someone who is selling a ticket they can't use) and a tout (someone who has 50 different tickets to sell).
And as per usual, it's us the paying crowd that suffer, especially in London. But what's the alternative? open your own venue?
5. J. Dixon
I am totally sick of the tout situtation lately. The last two gigs I have bought tickets to have cost me in total, about a hundred pounds more than they would if I'd been able to buy from licensed vendors.
Also, after researching for a little while I found out it's not even illegal in this country (but it is in Scotland). So there's nothing anyone can do unless the law gets changed.