Ticket Touts

There has been talk in the last few weeks of capping the amount you can charge for event ticket re-sales to 10% more than they were purchased for. As a keen live music and comedy fan I am all for this, I just really can’t see it working.

The most I’ve ever paid over the odds for a ticket was £200, which was roughly a 116% mark up, for Reading Festival the year Rage Against The Machine returned. It was definitely worth it, but obviously a 10% mark up would have been preferable. The problem was that there were virtually no tickets on eBay, and absolutely zero being sold by the touts outside, due to the popularity of the event.

Would this cap mean that a first come first served policy being used on resale now? Where does it stop? What if you bought the tickets on eBay but couldn’t go yourself? Could you then charge and extra 10% percent? And how exactly would you enforce this rule on touts?

Don’t get me wrong, touts drive me insane. I’ve been ripped off too many times to pretend it’s not a dirty, dishonest business. But they are clever, and they would find a way around the 10%. What else are they going to do? Become used car salesmen?

You’ll notice at this point that, in true blogger form, I am not offering any sort of solution, just complaining about a problem. This is due to lack of intelligence and expertise in the event industry. I’ll pop out to the library and get back to you.