The Many Victims of Ticket Touts

How do they sleep at night? It’s an honest question and the honest answer is probably on a pillow stuffed with money. Despite the evident loathing of ticket touts they have no shortage of customers, avid fans of this band or that who really do pay £400 and up to ensure they get to see their favourite artists. I don’t feel badly towards these fans, sometimes this is the only way they’ll get to see their artists at all as scalping becomes a real issue on a number of ticket seller sites. Touts are banking on the desperation of a few fans as resold tickets (that were bought for £40) can often times bring in 5x or 10x what they were bought for. If they purchase 5 but only sell 3, it’s still massive profit.

I myself am a self professed hermit. I’ve been to a handful of live performances, never festivals and I have always managed to get tickets for the small amount of bands I have seen. I do however have the insight of being married to a hardcore festival goer, a live music connoisseur/demon who I’m pretty sure has seen just about everyone at this point. The amount of times she has been shot down by the lack of tickets due to scalpers is staggering. She paid a tout, ONCE, before we met to see Take That, the tour where they reformed and Robbie came back. The ticket was around the £200 mark which to me is positively insane. She really wanted to see them and could get tickets no other way.

I understand those feelings, the ones that touts prey on. We went to see Muse in 2012 at the Etihad, my first real live performance experience. I was confused by the amount of people hanging around the entrance shouting about buying and selling tickets. Why would you turn up without having tickets? Natalie explained the whole deal to me and I’ve never looked at a tout the same way again. The latest victim seems to be the Ed Sheeran Divide Tour. All this morning I have seen a constant, trending, stream of frustrated fans unable to get tickets whilst resellers on Seatwave are already posting listings for tickets that go as high as £300-£400. If you want to go at this point you have no other option but to use them. It’s rattled that many cages that there have been several petitions drafted up to stop the resale of tickets. Sadly they never reached enough signatures to be debated in parliament: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/128969

The problem is not just limited to music events. It has recently plagued sports matches, conventions and festivals just to name a few.

Have you missed out on tickets only to see them available for sky high prices elsewhere? Have you ever used a tout before and what was your experience? Sound off in the comments and on twitter @CelebrityCutout.