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IRELAND IS UNLIKELY to propose new laws outlawing ticket touting – because the government believes legislation banning it may not be able to stop the problem.
Enterprise minister Richard Bruton has said that bringing in new laws, making it illegal to sell tickets for higher than their face value, would probably just send more touts online to sell their tickets on websites based in other countries.
In response to a parliamentary question from Labour backbencher Tommy Broughan, Bruton said it was up to ticket agents and promoters to enforce the regulations which many of them already had in place – including the authority to avoid a ticket if it had been resold for profit.
“Effective enforcement of these terms and conditions would go a long way towards stopping the resale of event tickets at the exorbitant prices referred to”, Bruton said.
Though the minister did not rule out bringing in legislation if the other approaches were ineffective, he said that making touting a criminal activity may not be an “appropriate or proportionate response” in trying to stop it from happening.
“The online nature of these activities means that a legislative prohibition in one jurisdiction may simply lead such businesses to relocate elsewhere,” he said.
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Toutless.ie is a fab website. I have nothing to do with it just in case anyone thinks otherwise. The owner of the site bans anyone selling tickets for more than face value!! And also bans anyone from offering more than face value!!
Touting needs to be stamped out, it’s getting ridiculous these days. Since ticket sales moved online, popular gigs can sell out in seconds. But you’ll always see touts outside with plenty of tickets, selling them for double the face value while genuine fans sit at home unable to attend the gig. Touting is a rotten business so if legislation can help stop it, I’m all for it.
I’d love to see touting completely banned, but that would mean the Governments taking on Ticketmasters own legalised touting website – Getmein.com. There’s already over 100 tickets for Springsteen on there now, in blocks of 6 at very nice mark ups.
See now that’s absolutely disgraceful, obviously the original buyers had no intention of going to the gig. I’m not sure how that site works, but I’m assuming Ticketmaster are taking a cut as well; making money by selling the same tickets twice.
AFAIK that’s exactly what they’re doing, there was something on Watchdog about it and that’s pretty much the size of it!
Tom Waits had the right idea a few years back but unfortunately there was an oversight. People couldn’t buy tickets as gifts because you had to bring the credit card used to book the tickets and photoID. What Ticketmaster should have done was set up an exchange mechanism whereby the buyer could go in to any outlet with the person they want to give the tickets to, and an offical exchange could be done at face value (or for a small admin fee) and the original ticket would be then nullified and the original buyer could be refunded. Simples.
It was wonderful walking to a gig without hearing a single shout of “Anyone boiiyyyin urr sellllin a thickah?”
I believe ticketbastard get about 15% of sale price through getmein, so they have mo incentive to keep resale prices low. It’s a scandal they get away with the per ticket fee they charge.
Bruton is right, its not his problem. This winner is Ticketmaster. They get full price on a sell out. Touts get markup if there’s demand… some probably lose out. Not the governments job to fix a dated system nor a ticketmastet customer service issue.
I’ve read that in many case the marked-up tickets are actually placed by promoters themselves. It allows them to benefit from the high price that people are actually willing to pay for an event without the negative publicity of much higher face value. They release only a fraction of the full amount of tickets, then drip feed the rest, adjusting the price to market conditions. Think of it like the way airlines sell their seats, with a fluid pricing structure that changes as flights sell out. If people are willing to pay 6 times or more the face value, it’d be strange if the promoters limited themselves smaller profits and smaller prices.
Sorry for replying to myself, but I wanted to dig out where I’d read this before. It’s from here, among others:
“I’m not revealing any huge industry secret,” says Lehrmann, “when I say that the majority of tickets are held back, and are sold either to local brokers or directly resold on a secondary site.”
Essentially, what happens is that bands set the face value of the tickets artificially low, so as not to look as though they’re ripping off their fans. But they only release a fraction of tickets to the public at face value. Lehrmann told me that a Taylor Swift show at National Arena last year sold just 13% of its tickets to the general public, with another 30% going to American Express and to the fan club. Fully 57% of the tickets were sold through some kind of back channel, presumably at a substantial mark-up from face value. In the case of MSG, it’s clear that’s going on: “at $40 face value,” says Lehrmann, “the promoter probably isn’t even paying the rent on the building.”
This is another of those “only in Ireland” stories.
Yep, touting would never happen anywhere else would it? Sick of people talking down this country so much all the time.
It happens everywhere but some countries have effective laws to deal with it. Bruton’s position is a cop out !
Has anyone ever stood outside a gig at RDS? I’d say you can hear quite well?
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