Community: Real Life

Ticket touts


James

James is a 16-year-old enjoying his new found freedom after finishing GCSEs. He is scrimping and saving for a car for when he turns 17 but so far a second-hand rusty scooter looks more likely than the pristine turquoise new Mini he fantasises about when picking lottery numbers.

They come in many different guises, but James Hilsdon isn't paying his hard-earned cash to any of them.

Whether it's tickets for Reading Festival, Madonna or Busted that you're frantically trying to get your hands on you can be pretty much guaranteed that getting them won't be easy. If you phone it'll be constantly engaged. Try the internet and the website will either be eternally slow or - worse - crash, prompting you to attack the computer with a splurge of four-letter words.

It's also as good as guaranteed that if you and I were unable to get tickets there will be hundreds who did that will happily give you one of theirs - at a price. Whether it's the touts curb-crawling outside the venue barking out that they "buy and sell", ticket 'agents' and ticket 'brokers' (who are basically touts rich enough to have an office and an ad in the yellow pages) or everyday folk trying to make a quick buck selling a 'spare ticket' on eBay.

The last breed of tout annoys me the most. The eBay sellers. They come with all sorts of excuses -  'I broke my leg and can't attend so I'm selling the tickets', or 'I accidentally bought an extra ticket' - as the seller that sold me a Red Hot Chili Peppers ticket claimed (and then added an extra £50 for his 'mistake'). Maybe they think buyers won't view them with as much contempt if they come up with a justification for their gluttony.  Maybe I'm idealistic, but if I happened to have a spare ticket for a sold out concert I'd sell it for what it cost me to a mate or to a fellow fan. I certainly wouldn't follow the path of the eBay sellers who fleece an individual for all they can afford knowing the desperate individual will pay well over the odds.

"Promoters seem to turn a blind eye to those taking advantage of fans by charging double or sometimes even triple the face value price"

Sadly, promoters do little to protect fans. Promoters seem to turn a blind eye to those taking advantage of fans by charging double or sometimes even triple the face value price.

Promoters could do a lot more and could do well to follow the example set by Michael Eavis at Glastonbury. All Glastonbury tickets had the buyer's name on them to stop people re-selling tickets and checks at the gate to ensure the buyer had not re-sold their ticket. Tickets were also restricted to two per person preventing people from buying lots to sell on for profit. Admittedly, this system was by no means perfect with many disappointed sleepy folk up all night trying to get tickets with no luck; for them television highlights were the closest they got to Glastonbury.

Touts define greed and selfishness. Unfortunately we continue to fund them when tickets for that must-see concert sell out and we reluctantly hand over too much of our hard-earned cash out of desperation. Still, these people DO get their comeuppance sometimes... when they're unable to sell their tickets you can get a bargain. Then again, even if it is half price who wants to see Cher live?

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