To think that ticket selling for big gigs is a total scam and the genuine fans are suffering

[plipplops]

This is a long one, apologies in advance...

DD (15) wanted to see Sabrina Carpenter in Birmingham next March. She's 15 and autistic, we have an Access Card which means she can get a free carer's ticket for someone to accompany her to things like this. Tickets on general release yesterday (Thursday).

I'd looked on the Utilita Arena website beforehand and it said tickets were going to be £60-100ish. I'd also rung the Accessible Ticket line to ask how it works as it can be complicated? Spoke to someone at the Ticket Factory who's their ticketing partner. They just said to call if we had issues. Ticket Factory also had a presale thing you could sign up to to buy them on the Wednesday which I did.

She follows SC on Instagram and had signed up to the VIP presale 'you're special' thing which gives you early access to buying tickets on the Tuesday.

On Tuesday she gets sent a link which takes you to Ticketmaster, with a 'you're 16,500th in the queue'. At the same time I called the Ticket Factory Accessible phone line. We're both on hold for 45 minutes.

She gets to the front of the queue, and all it offers her is two tickets at £350 each!!! At almost exactly the same time I get through on the phone and they sell me two tickets (one normal, one carer's free one) for about £80.

So we've got tickets, great, but what about every other fan??

The next day, I click on the link from Ticket Factory just out of interest. It tells me I'm 19,000th in the queue and also that the presale tickets have sold out anyway, so to try at 10am Thursday for normal sale ones (like I say, I don't need to buy any more at this point but I'm down the rabbit hole by now).

At the same time, on Viagogo there are loads of resale tickets available, that all have a face value of £60-£100 being sold from £200-£2300.

What the actual fuck is going on? None of those are being sold by fans who bought them through the presale the day before, then have suddenly realised they can't make it and are trying to sell them on.

Yesterday they went on sale properly for general release, sold out immediately.

So my question is, who's making the money here? And if you're just a genuine fan, how do you get your hands on tickets for anything like the normal face value? Do the artists make the extra cash, and if not how is this allowed to happen?

I feel so sad and enraged for all the regular fans who just want to see stuff, and are being fleeced by a system they just can't figure out.

That's it really. Thanks if you've hung on this far!

Yes all well known and big artists do. Maybe not Joe Blogs playing Reading town hall but big artists definitely do.

@Clamchops The highest I saw the tickets was £385, but they were available from £60, and I saw some for £86 myself. The OP called the accessible line which will only sell tickets to those who require them and got some for £80. She was buying from a different pool that most of the general pubic could access, but they were the same price as many tickets online. I'm assuming either the accessible tickets were not dynamically priced or were just a bit slower to sell.

That was the face value of standing tickets I think? I was calling the Accessible phone line and they put me on hold a few times while they checked things, I think I somehow lucked out that Ticket Factory weren't due to sell them for a day, but because my daughter had an advanced access thing through SC's Instagram (which took you to the £350 Ticketmaster option) they allowed us to buy them.

How is it not a scam? The venue says they're going to be £60-£100, then when my daughter gets through on what is sold as a VIP presale day the only option is to pay £350???

But how are they buying them? My daughter followed a link emailed from SC's Instagram at bang on 12 noon when it was sent and the only option she was given was to buy £350 tickets? Where are the people who resell them managing to get them?

My point is that my daughter did all the right things - message the artist, get the link to allegedly get first access to tickets (which were billed by the venue as being £60-£100). When she gets to the front of the queue 45 minutes later the only option is to spend £350 each.
And yet the very next day there are loads of tickets on Viagogo that have a face value of £80 being sold for £hundreds. Where are those people getting them from? I can not believe there's not some kind of organised system behind it, and some asshole is getting very rich?

most Ticketmaster presales have a waiting room open 15 minutes before the sale starts, then everyone in the 'waiting room' gets bumped into the queue in a random slot as soon as it hits 12pm (or whatever the sale time is). If you daughter was only clicking the link at 12pm and not already in the waiting room then it's likely she will have been behind everyone who was. The people reselling will have been much further up the queue and purchased ones which were selling for face value. Birmingham is only a 15,000 seater venue, so being 16,000 in the queue for a presale where not all tickets will be available is never going to mean you get the pick of tickets.

I think the Wimbledon ticket way is the way to go-you can’t transfer tickets. If you can’t go, all of your tickets go back to Wimbledon. I know that’s unfair for oriole in your group but currently it’s a disgrace.

I've stopped buying in advance and started buying last minute on Twickets. Miles better.

There are always tickets available for cheaper than the list price on there.

They write computer programmes to circumnavigate the software. Bots.

https://queue-it.com/blog/ticket-bots/

touting is big business!

This is exactly the sort of thing I mean. It gives me rage. I know it's only a concert and nobody HAS to go, but why don't the artists care and do something about it? It's so shit.

See my other posts for links, the industry and artists have been trying for years to ban this. But the Tories kept blocking their pleas to make it illegal.

amp.theguardian.com/money/article/2024/may/29/revealed-how-touts-drew-up-secret-plans-to-sabotage-labours-ticket-reforms

Totally agree. My DD is in the same position and we just cant justify paying that much for tickets. It makes me so sad for her as when I was her again I started going to see bands I loved and it was no where near as expensive as it is now even with inflation etc.

Many years ago I saw the White Stripes. The tickets went on sale the day before the gig. It was made clear that whoever purchased them had to show ID and the card used to pay (which was ticked off on paper after they checked 😁 ). Also max 2 tickets. It didn't completely stop touting (I could have bought two and let a stranger stand with me when I 'signed in') but it was something.

There has been so much hysteria over gigs recently (Olivia rodrigo/Taylor swift) I know Sabrina Carpenter has been around a while but it's only recently that she's blown up so I'm surprised at the cost of her tickets. Marketing teams are doing an excellent job right now(!)

Virtual Ticketmaster monopoly .. I don’t think they give a fig about resales, as they make money from them .

They need to do away with resale. I don't know if it's still the same but when I went to Glastonbury 20 years ago there was a limit on the number of tickets you could buy and you had to have photo I'd to prove who you were

You used to be able to go and buy your tickets from the venue's box office; shame you can't do that any more.

Just make you take your passport and it has to match the name originally booked

The biggest scam is the admin fees when you don't have contact with a single human being at any part of the process.

@plipplops

It does not really answer your question but I think that only the venue should be allowed to sell tickets and reselling "banned". If a ticketholder cannot go the venue takes it back less 10%. Sounds simple enough.

Couldn't agree more.

We had codes for every presale category, tried every time and could only get VIP tickets for over £200 which was too much. i didn’t have the same problem for Olivia Rodrigo but that may have just been luck.

It would be a recipe for a serious crush disaster with loss of life at some bigger gigs.

The really large arena gigs have never operated on a pay on the door basis in my experience - only smaller / mid-size venues.

My daughter said she wasn't even going to try for Sabrina carpenter as she had heard it was dynamic pricing.

This is wild.

I'd never even heard of Sabrina carpenter till last week.