IT’S a scenario most music fans will recognise. You cue up your credit card in preparation for buying gig tickets when they go on sale; then, just as you’re about to pay, a message flashes up on screen to say they’re sold out. A few minutes later comes the double blow when you realise the briefs you wanted are miraculously available on touting websites for three times their face value. To pay or not to pay the vastly-inflated price becomes the question.
This is a particularly maddening – and increasingly common – situation for culture lovers, and where touts were once rather shady-looking fellows hanging around outside concert venues, in the modern era they are more likely to be based overseas and hiding behind internet logos, banking on our ever-increasing appetite for live events.
And these days it’s not just frustrated fans that hit out at touts. The Proclaimers are the latest in a growing cohort of musicians and bands to blast the them, having called the inflated prices being charged on secondary websites for their tickets “scandalous”.
Briefs for the Scottish leg of the Reid brothers’ latest UK tour, which takes in Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Perth, Glasgow, Inverness, Dundee, Motherwell and Stirling, had a face value of £35.75 and sold out in under an hour. But they were quickly available on secondary sites such as Stubhub and Viagogo for up to £175 each.
The brothers have apologised to fans, saying the situation is beyond their control. They also blasted the fact that touts had their hands on tickets within minutes and demanded a change in the law to prevent fans being ripped off.
But how do the touts get their hands on so many tickets so quickly in the first place, especially when so many venues demand ID before allowing entry?
Secondary websites commonly use so-called bots – automated internet applications – to harvest thousands of tickets within a matter of seconds, with the sole purpose of selling them on to genuine fans at highly-inflated prices. Some also employ people to sit at computers with super-fast broadband connections and use multiple credit cards to snap up tickets, while others sell on a speculative basis without actually having secured the briefs.
At present, ultimately it’s up to fans whether they are prepared to pay way over the odds to see their favourite performers – only last week, tickets for the Rolling Stones’ Marrayfield gig this summer were being advertised for £1,300 three days before the briefs went on general sale.
Many tout sites claim that they are simply online marketplaces where fans can re-sell tickets, that the vast sums asked often don’t reflect the final sum paid for tickets.
But The Proclaimers are right to call out the touts, and they are right to demand stringent legislative measures to prevent fans being ripped off.
A new law drawn up by Westminster and due to come into force next month will outlaw the internet bots and demand that tout sites provide more transparency about the ticket, including whether ID is an entry stipulation.
Considering it took 10 years of campaigning by fans groups to get to this point, anything that will make it harder for touts to operate is to be commended.
What many artists and fans really want, however, is a 10 per cent cap on ticket mark-ups, and this may yet be necessary to stop the touts.
It’s an extremely positive thing, both artistically and economically, that the culture sector is booming in Scotland, that so many people want to experience live music and events at so many of our fantastic venues. But this must not give greedy touts carte blanche to extort huge sums from long-suffering music fans. We will watch with interest to see whether the new law makes this harder for them to achieve.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here