Providing you with the definitive guide to everything that matters in the event and music promotion industries.

For all music fans the adrenalin rush from booking tickets to a hyped up event is well known, however the bubble is regularly burst when you then find out that the event is sold out in minutes, seconds in fact. Then to reinforce that negative feeling, you then see your prized tickets being sold by some fiend on ebay for an offensive price. They don’t value the emotion felt towards an event and have no qualms in watching you pay through the nose to experience the latest gig, even if it is then with a bitter taste in your mouth.

Ticket touts seem to have upped the anti in the past decade thanks to online purchasing of tickets for events. Events sell out, and then they have the power to charge whatever unfeasible amount they deem ‘reasonable’ (even more outrageous than the 15% convenience charge Ticketmaster kindly applies). This sadly is the problem with supply and demand, touts know they’re onto a good thing when the demand is high for an event, so when supply is limited (eg with a festival) people can end up paying double or triple the face value for a ticket.

So why do it?
Well, it’s fairly simple: because you still want to see your favourite act perform whether it’s The White Lies or Miley Cyrus, taste aside, you can still be ripped off. Until a law is put in place there were limited ways to overcome the touts, until recently…

With the development of technology we are constantly being introduced to new ways to do things, whether it is drinking an imaginary pint on your Iphone (still don’t quite understand the point of that one) or slightly more useful things such as online banking, change is happening. So, as vendors slowly wake up to the touts activities, restrictions are being implemented, for example limiting how many tickets can be purchased at once, introducing eticketing with a personalised barcode, or putting names or photos as a form of ID on tickets (used by Glastonbury controversially). All of these are great ways of putting off touts, as it makes reselling harder for them, and we all know they’re inherently lazy people who are clearly incapable of getting a proper, heaven forbid, ethical job.

There have been calls for an industry ‘code of conduct’ to be introduced, or for legal enforcements to be applied. Currently, the only thing which is illegal is the reselling of Football tickets, which was set up more to counteract football violence, but has still discouraged touts. Obviously avoiding touts altogether would be the best solution as they are clearly not the most upstanding members of the community, however where else can customers buy those beloved tickets?

Scarlet Mist was set up by a doctor in 2003 who became so enraged with ticket touts he set up an ethical reselling site. It is a place for people to come to buy or sell at a ‘reasonable’ rate, although technically the prices are not reinforced, they are still a lot lower than other sites.

There are 4 stages in buying a ticket: enter your details, search ticket availability, reserve tickets you are interested in and you will be contacted with a verification code, finally you will be given the sellers name and contact details. Then ‘it’s up to you’. Whilst they cannot enforce actions on the site, it is more transparent, a word which Seatwave also likes to use.

Seatwave is a ticket reseller, who according to Joe Cohen aims to eliminate fraud from the industry. The proceeds from sales are not passed on until after any event, and it also claims to have price transparency. Seatwave does however charge a percentage; for sellers 10% of the final price, and for buyers 15%, still a lot easier to swallow than the price of touts, or even Ticketmaster. It also has a pricing model with 16 variables such as the number of shows per season which can help to predict the final price of a ticket.

Finally, another site which I am admittedly begrudged to mention is Ticketmaster, who have an exchange site, although a number of tickets on here are sold above face value, it is admittedly a lot more secure than any tout and possibly other reselling sites. It has more events on offer in the US, although I’m sure will expand more aggressively in the UK in the near future.

For promoters and venues, the options to counteract the threat of touts are to work with ticket sellers who use technology such as barcoded tickets, paperless tickets (tickets are sent to a mobile), or named tickets. This will be, until the law enforces it, a suitable deterrent for most touts. The more secure your tickets, the less likely touts are to get involved, and the more trust the public will place in you. As ticket prices have increased so much over recent years the least we can do, as the seller, is provide a secure platform which gives the customer the best chance of attending the events they want to.

The latest form of secure ticketing is currently being tested over a period of 4 football matches in Belgium. For the past 12 years all citizens over the age of 12 must have an electronic identity card, these are now being used to hold ticket details on. Rather than being sent tickets, the information is stored to the individuals eID card, which is then scanned on a card reader at the selected event. Not only is this eco-friendly, but it also dramatically reduces the risk of touts and reselling. Everyone’s a winner, except perhaps the tout.

As technology continues to develop, touts will continue to struggle, the change has already been seen in the Football industry, so why not elsewhere? The demise of the tout is hopefully in sight, so we can all skip off into the sunset to the Miley gig, er, I mean MGMT.