Late yesterday Channel 4 won their legal battle with Viagogo, allowing the Dispatches undercover investigation into the allegedly dubious practises at secondary ticket agencies to be broadcast. Viagogo’s argument that they were attempting to ‘protect their customer base’ apparently didn’t outweigh the public’s right to know that the customer base that desperately needed protecting was, in a large proportion of cases, actually Viagogo themselves.
Whilst the resulting documentary was interesting enough, in a ‘look how morally bereft these companies/promoters are’ kind of way, none of the revelations were a particular surprise. Sure, they showed the wads of credit cards that these secondary agencies were using to purchase tickets for themselves and sell on at huge profit, and they told of how the big promoters happily allocate their tickets directly to the secondary supplier to sell at inflated prices, before you so much as get a chance to buy them for face value yourself. Which apparently is all down the massive fees that the bands charge, and nothing whatsoever to do with promoters being greedy, honest.
But if someone’s trying to charge over twice face value for a ticket, before adding extortionate booking fees, they’ve blatantly already crossed that boundary into ‘unscrupulous’ and any other dodgy dealings aren’t going to shock us particularly. The whole notion that these websites are solely a ‘fan to fan ticket exchange’ always rang false anyway; genuine fans are less likely to overly inflate the ticket prices before selling them on to another fan. Barring the ‘everything you like, I liked five years ago’ brigade, there’s validation in someone else loving your favourite band, we’re unlikely to want to scam them out of their rent money. If we’re honest, the most shocking part of the programme was that there are people out there genuinely prepared to pay £2,000 to go see Coldplay in an enormodome. Really? £2,000? For Coldplay? Really?
Fast forward to this morning, and I tried to purchase standing tickets for Pulp’s Teenage Cancer Trust gig at the Royal Albert Hall. The thing is, I’m not great with heights and the couple of times I’ve tried out the view from the gods, I’ve spent most of the gig sat rigid, terrified that I’m about to do some bizarre roly-poly over the crowd at the RAH (oh, how embarrassing) to a certain death (double cringe). Standing or bust then, and I knew that on that basis, success was unlikely. In a scene that I’m sure will be familiar to most of us, I had various ticket websites repeatedly refreshing from 9.28am, and the second those buttons came live, I clicked, entered payment information, and remained unsurprised that they’d sold out whilst I typed my security code. It’s no biggie, you can’t win them all and whilst I’d love to go see Jarvis wiggle those hips again, if it’s not to be, I can deal with that.
Personally, I would never buy from a secondary agent website, although I would and occasionally do buy tickets for less than face value on eBay, mostly because I think the seller deserves it for being greedy. Isn’t it nice though, that within minutes of the tickets going on sale and selling out, we have another chance to buy them? And at only £98.44 each, including all of their fees, on Viagogo. Obviously those were the cheapest on offer, at the other end of the spectrum, we have £680.41 for a single ticket - for that price, I’d expect a cuppa with Candida, followed by a heavy petting session with Mr Cocker (please). Because those tickets should be around £60 a pop, including booking fee. And those tickets should - and this is where I really start to take exception - be for charity.
You could look upon the systematic ripping off of music fans as simply supply and demand, and you could consider that if people are willing to pay that kind of money, it’s their own look out and we shouldn’t expect the government to regulate against stupidity. Which is probably the best view to take, as clearly, the powers that be apparently think the industry’s doing a good job of regulating itself (can anyone remember the last time that worked, by the way?). Apparently, the argument is that Seatwave, Viagogo et al are actually doing us all a massive favour and keeping a grip on the secondary ticket market prices. And this argument is in no way invalidated when they charge £1,349.52 for a Paul McCartney concert ticket - again, supposedly for charity, because, you see, the seller set the price. And the seller is, more often than not, them. Hang on, I’m confused, can someone explain all this to me again?
Anyway, whilst Dispatches stated that there’s no link between the bands and the secondary resellers directly, there are a small group of artists appear to be very aware that their tickets are reselling at a huge mark up. A few bands, notably The Libertines when they reformed in 2010, the Arctic Monkeys, and not forgetting, Mr Eavis have at some point in their careers taken steps to ensure that their tickets can’t be flogged on for insane profits by utilising a registration system, but for the most part, as long as we’re still ramming into their shows, ensuring a good atmosphere, and they still get paid, is it really the band’s problem anyway?
Since no one’s going to do this for us, here’s the best plan I can think of. If we all pinky swear not to buy from secondary markets, we could actually change this for ourselves. So when you find yourself in that sad sad place I did this morning, realising that you’re going to miss out on whatever gig de jour you were planning on blowing half your rent money on, instead of spending ludicrous amounts of money on eBay, Viagogo, Seatwave, getmein, or whatever; don’t. Don’t go. Accept that not everyone can, life’s not always fair, and move on. There’ll be another chance. I can’t tell you how many ‘last ever gigs’ I’ve been to that have been followed by a reformation a few years later. And if you never ever get to see said band, it’s not going to kill you. Because if we just refuse to be swindled any more, and those greedy promoters discover that they don’t make a few thousand extra by selling straight to the secondary supply websites, when sold out gigs end up being empty at the front, that’s when things might actually change. So…, who’s in?
Featuring Yard Act, Death Cab For Cutie, Graham Coxon, Maisie Peters and more.