UK Government Investigates Ticket Touting On Online Auction Sites Such As eBay
January 7, 2008 by Dave Parrack
For the last few years there’s been a healthy market for music event tickets on online auction sites such as eBay.
People are now so confident of at least making their money back, if not a healthy profit, that they will buy tickets for gigs they have no interest in going to, purely to sell online.
The problem is if this was done on the street, outside of the gig itself, the sellers would be classed as ticket touts and arrested on the spot. Now a group of British MPs are calling for an end to the unfair practise, and an industry code of conduct for the resale of tickets on these sites.
A report will be published on Thursday January 10th, which amongst other things claims that these sites and the sellers who use them to make a fast buck are exploiting fans.
Festivals particularly are victims of this kind of reselling trend, with tickets bought at face value on the day of sale then changing hands for many times that amount the nearer the date approaches.
Tickets for football matches are already banned from being resold online, and now music industry figures and promoters are after the same level of security for their artists concerts.
Led Zeppelin Tickets Sell For £83,000 In BBC Charity Auction | Scots Defy ‘Tight’ Myth
November 15, 2007 by Dave Parrack
A man from Glasgow in Scotland, has snapped up a pair of tickets for the Led Zeppelin comeback concert next month for £83,000 in a BBC organised charity auction.
Radio 4 host Terry Wogan held the auction in aid of Children in Need, the BBC money raising initiative for kids around the world. Over the four days it was active, the auction raised £894,000, with the Led Zeppelin tickets contributing almost 10% to the total.
Kenneth Donell was the lucky man who bid the most for the tickets. I say lucky, not only because he’ll be the envy of millions by actually going to the concert, but also because he has got enough money in the first place to bid such a stupidly large amount of money.
The tickets were only £125 each originally, but to get them you had to enter an online draw. Over a million people put their name down, with only the randomly selected 20,000 securing tickets.
Tickets were being sold on eBay but most auctions were shut after the promoters of the concert complained to the auction site.