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  3. The last time I bought a tiket from a tout was 1991 and I got it half price because they’d over bought.
    Now, if the government could just do something about Ticketmaster’s “fees” and dynamic pricing, we’d all be better off.

    • Ideally they would put all tickets on sale in one batch and allow those that are most interested to buy them. As it stands the slicing of tickets amongst “pre-sales” and the variations in pricing ‘platinum seats’ simply work against the fan. If you care enough to be on line when the tickets are first sold, you should be able to purchase the beat seats that will be available. But that wouldn’t maximise sales value.

      Nothing wrong with reducing the prices closer to the date if seats haven’t sold but if you’ve charged top dollar for a worse seat bought earlier due to splitting up the seats between sellers and tiers, that’s less than ideal for the fans.

      This probably applies to larger arena / stadium shows.

      • No objection to large scale fan pre sales and to a certain allocation of tickets going in sponsor pre-sales, but here in Ireland it’s now reaching the point where hardly any seats are available in the general sale

    • Don’t think this would have had any effect on the price of £140 asked to see robots masquerading as Kraftwerk. Would like to have seen the show but didn’t compare favourably with the £40 to see the ABBA holograms.

  7. Ticketmaster (and other ticket sellers) are touts themselves with “platinum” tickets where they just quadruple the price for whichever tickets they want and they also are sometimes using surge pricing where prices go up (often to thousands) depending how many people are trying to buy tickets. So face value in these cases is basically meaningless as the same ticket in the same seat could have cost 80 quid or 800 quid. So I don’t see how reselling at face value can be completely enforceable unless these procedures from the official ticket sellers are outlawed

  8. I bought a ticket this morning. US band playing one UK gig on an otherwise supporting slot for arenas. I fully expected to not get a ticket. Had they all gone by the time I got through I wouldn’t be going. Touts wouldn’t have got any of my money… I do know that I would probably have paid at least 50% more to the venue.

  9. Someone I know spent 800 NZD (about £400) on their Metallica ticket last week. Others travelled over to Aus to see Oasis and paid similar amounts. People are prepared to pay these prices, clearly.

    The guy I spoke to about Oasis is about 55. I’ve known him off and on for many years and we had never discussed music. I was delighted to find some common ground, because he’s a quiet person and getting a conversation going with him is hard. He volunteered the information about going to see Oasis recently so I asked him a bit more about it. Please believe me when I say this – I didn’t grill him on details but I established that he wasn’t a music fan generally. He just went for the experience and good for him. This is the mass market that Oasis attracts.

    • The sad thing is fans like the guy you mention are never going to go to the
      sweaty clubs to see the bands that 5/10/20/40 years later, they’ll befotking out a king’s ransom to see.

      • Don’t know what it’s like around your way but around here there ARE no sweaty clubs with new-minted rock/pop bands.
        Just pubs that only employ covers bands and one or two cafés that have acoustic solo/duo performers, mainly singing/playing trad folk or Dylan, Cohen, Neil Young and Joni songs.

        • In the UK, there can’t be many population centres where a sweaty club is more than a 30 minute drive away. I’m lucky (in Bedford) that my nearest (Esquires) is less than 15 mins away but there 40 minutes in the car will get me to 3 or 4 others. The oddest thing about those clubs is that many of them survive on the revenue from the nights with tribute bands. Bands such as Noasis sell out two nights in a row before moving to the next venue (again 30 mins away) and doing the same.
          My next visit to Esquires (unless something else crops up first) is to see The Molotovs which is costing me less than the price that two pints were at the Wembley Oasis gigs!

          • No small sweaty clubs here in rural Ireland either, but i go up to Dublin to see gigs about once a month and would far rather pay €30 to €50 to see an up and coming or heritage act in a tiny venue like whelans than €100+ to see a big name act in the 3 Arena

            • The main music venue pub here closed, seemingly for good, after struggling along for a bit after Covid.
              I don’t think it was ever a very profitable enterprise, with live music 7 days a week (2 sessions on Sunday), but it was just about paying it’s way for quite a number of years.
              Two post-Covid attempts were made to revive it but failed and it currently stands empty.
              No residential neighbours close enough for noise complaints but just a tiny bit too far from the town’s main entertainment area and no extra space or possibility of providing anything other than basic bar snack food.

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