Should sites like Seatwave be closed down?

I think they should IMO. It's basically Tout Central. Belgian leglislation in 2013 that prohibited the above cost selling of tickets forced them to close their site there.

Dublin v Tyrone tickets currently on it selling for way above face value.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaa-cancel-tickets-for-all-ireland-sfc-semi-final-between-dublin-and-tyrone-1.3183527

JMNolan

I have 4 tickets for Ireland v South Africa in Nov. I bought them for €40 each, tickets in the same block are for sale on Seatwave for over €200 each. That is shameful

godtabh

the simple solution is to assign the tickets to a person once purchased. I've seen some events do this.

Samaris

I don't really think it should be allowed, although I grant that they're worth what eejits will pay for them. Just sell the things until they're gone at the pre-set prices and get on with it.

B0jangles

You do all know who owns Seatwave don't you?

judeboy101

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

Syphonax

B0jangles wrote: »

You do all know who owns Seatwave don't you?

The Boss?

batistuta9

No, what the hell is so special about tickets?

You can buy anything else & sell it on for profit

frink

godtabh wrote: »

the simple solution is to assign the tickets to a person once purchased. I've seen some events do this.

Agreed if it policed properly. Been to two events with my name on the ticket and got checked neither time.

Glastonbury print your photo on the ticket which is a good approach but don't think that is realistic for every event

Shutting down ticket touting sites must be the first port of call. Selling via ebay etc too

B0jangles

B0jangles wrote: »

You do all know who owns Seatwave don't you?

It's pretty clear alright......

Amirani

I don't have a problem paying more than some arbitrary "face value" for some event that I want to see. If there's tickets for a gig on Seatwave for €100 that I personally value at €100, what ounce of difference does it make to me if the promoter sets face value at €50? I'm gonna buy the ticket. All face value is is an amount that the promoter think they can charge to maximise revenue.

Despite the majority of people being happy to live in a market-based economy whereby the value of commodities is set at the amount that people are willing to pay, for some reason people have an irrational emotional aversion to such when it comes to tickets. There are already measure in place against bulk buying of tickets that combat wholesale touting, but I don't see the issue in people valuing and buying/selling something they own for whatever fecking price they want. If the price is too high for you, don't buy the ticket...

JMNolan

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

batistuta9 wrote: »

No, what the hell is so special about tickets?

You can buy anything else & sell it on for profit

I think this is why tickets are different

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0723/892408-ticket-touting/

Boom_Bap

Seatwave as a site is fine, the ethics behind it are all wrong.

If I buy a ticket for something at face value, can't go and want to put it back on the market for face value, seatwave should be the place for that.

If the owners of the site take a block of tickets from another site which they happen to own to sell out the gig, and resell the tickets at extortionist prices, that should not be allowed.

dan1895

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

Thats not how it works though. The loaf of bread would have to be sold via a service provided by the shop which they then take a cut for. They are basically selling something twice and making profits on both transactions.

B0jangles

Deleted User wrote: »

It's pretty clear alright......

Yup, so they get their cut from the original sale plus a very nice second bite from the tout sale. They also change a percentage, not a flat fee so the higher the tout's price, the more Ticketmaster makes.

It is 100% in Ticketmaster's interest for tickets to be resold for as much as possible on Seatwave -It's a massive, massive rip-off.

judeboy101

JMNolan wrote: »

I think this is why tickets are different

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0723/892408-ticket-touting/

If you replace the words 'criminal gangs' with 'C.I.F' and the word 'ticket' with 'house' , that article makes sense.

grogi

Deleted User wrote: »

I think they should IMO.

For each closed five new will appear if people want to use them. No point in chasing them really.

Cancelling those tickets is much better idea - and that's what GAA started to do. Nobody will risk buying the tickets from a dodgy source - and the sites will die on their own.

Korvanica

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

Look up ticket touting.

There's no such thing as bread touting so the comparison is retarded.

Amirani

Amirani wrote: »

I don't have a problem paying more than some arbitrary "face value" for some event that I want to see. If there's tickets for a gig on Seatwave for €100 that I personally value at €100, what ounce of difference does it make to me if the promoter sets face value at €50? I'm gonna buy the ticket. All face value is is an amount that the promoter think they can charge to maximise revenue.

Despite the majority of people being happy to live in a market-based economy whereby the value of commodities is set at the amount that people are willing to pay, for some reason people have an irrational emotional aversion to such when it comes to tickets. There are already measure in place against bulk buying of tickets that combat wholesale touting, but I don't see the issue in people valuing and buying/selling something they own for whatever fecking price they want. If the price is too high for you, don't buy the ticket...

You could buy 8 tickets for the U2 event I think? A heaven sent opportunity for the touts.

grogi

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

Now there is a certain character that buys all the bread in your village and sells it for 100% profit. Is that a problem?

s15r330

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

Not the same scenario in any way, shape or form.

Imagine I have a shop, in this shop I have 1,000 loaves of bread for €1 each.
Outside there are 3,000 people waiting desperately for bread.
I get a brainwave and decide to sneak 500 loaves out the back into the shop next door (which I also own) and tell people i'm sold out.
I'm going to sell these loaves for €5 a pop as I have the monopoly on loaves of bread and I'm a greedy cnut.

That is a more realistic scenario as this is exactly what tickmaster does.

JMNolan

judeboy101 wrote: »

If you replace the words 'criminal gangs' with 'C.I.F' and the word 'ticket' with 'house' , that article makes sense.

I don't disagree with you but we're talking about tickets. From the article

Mr Walker said it was "nonsense" to think that consumers and fans parted with hard earned money to buy tickets and then a few minutes later decide they could not attend the event, resulting in huge numbers of tickets going up for re-sale.

He said some "super touts" were making up to £10m (more than €11m) a year from this market.

K.Flyer

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

There is a big difference between that and if you had gone in and deliberately bought out half the bread stock in the store knowing that others would be looking for some, so that you could hold the bread and sell it on at grossly inflated prices and that your actions were given full support of the bread manufacturer.

It is interesting to note that the old terms and conditions on the back of TicketMaster tickets prohibited the selling on of tickets. The conditions were swiftly changed when SeatWave came along, I wonder why.
Also, some Artists and Promoters have said they are against touting of any sort, yet their tickets still end up on SeatWave aided and abetted by TicketsMaster.

Stonedpilot

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I think they should IMO. It's basically Tout Central. Belgian leglislation in 2013 that prohibited the above cost selling of tickets forced them to close their site there.

Dublin v Tyrone tickets currently on it selling for way above face value.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaa-cancel-tickets-for-all-ireland-sfc-semi-final-between-dublin-and-tyrone-1.3183527

Forget the "ethical" codswallop if someone CAN afford to spend hundreds on a ticket and is willing to do so there will always be a market for it.


People forget the likes of Viagogo are in bed with the promoters through "allocations" of tickets as proven in the documenary the great ticket scandal. Guranteed x amount of tickets to tout and promoter gets a cut.

Seatwave is owned by ticketmaster too!.

Human greed comes into it. If you can get €500 for something worth €50 how many folk would turn away the €500 from someone who can obviously afford that

If people are being ripped off the promoters are up their tits in it.

It's no different than people buying the newest console just before Christmas and sticking it up on adverts or ebay for double the price. It's a cruddy thing to do, but only is successful because people are eejits enough to pay for it.

JMNolan

Deleted User wrote: »

It's no different than people buying the newest console just before Christmas and sticking it up on adverts or ebay for double the price. It's a cruddy thing to do, but only is successful because people are eejits enough to pay for it.

It is different because there aren't organised crime gangs buying PS4s before christmas and firing them up on the buy and sell and making millions out of it

Amirani

Deleted User wrote: »

It's no different than people buying the newest console just before Christmas and sticking it up on adverts or ebay for double the price. It's a cruddy thing to do, but only is successful because people are eejits enough to pay for it.

You're only an eejit if you spend more than you can afford. I'm sure someone earning good money doesn't really feel like an eejit paying €150 instead of €75 for a match/gig that they really want to see.

Dyr

It does'nt help that a lot of people in Ireland are awful liggers with a terror of missing out
They'd show up at the opening of an envelope if they thought everyone else was going to be there

I dunno how many times I've seen people I know scramble for tickets to bands they dont even know just because there was a buzz about it. Like that pixies gig in trinity. Mentioned it to certain people who wouldn't know the pixies from the pink fairies but you could see the panic rising in their eyes as I went on about how that would be jam packed given the pixies reputation.

B0jangles

Deleted User wrote: »

It's no different than people buying the newest console just before Christmas and sticking it up on adverts or ebay for double the price. It's a cruddy thing to do, but only is successful because people are eejits enough to pay for it.

It would only be the same if you had bought the newest console from the same company you then used to resell it, and that company stood to make more from the second sale than the first.

The bottom line is that Ticketmaster stands to make MORE money from the Seatwave sale than they do from the original sale. It is 100% in their interest to make sure as many tickets are resold on Seatwave as possible, and by any means they are able to get away with.

It's a little like the Gamestop business model where the profit margin for them is massively bigger when they sell used games than from new ones, but instead of the used games being cheaper than the new ones, they are 2-5 times the original price.

daheff

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

the big difference here is that there are multiple ways to get bread -other providers or make it yourself. Bread is not restricted supply (or a monopolised supply).

Event tickets are restricted and in much shorter supply than the demand for them.


I think peoples biggest issue is that ticketmaster want a cut of the touts profits. And of the artists. If ticket prices were increased to equilibrium then there would be no touting....but they cant as public opinion would then be against artists/ticketmaster rather than against touts (and seatwave).

mimimcmc

Toutless.com have the right idea
If i'm ever looking for gig tickets, toutless is the first place I go.. Wouldn't dream of buying from Seatwave, they are the devil!

Dirty Dingus McGee

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

There is a limit on the number of tickets available for the Dublin Tyrone match.There is really no limit on loafs of bread available to be bought..

You've just taken advantage of an idiot, the ticket touts take advantage of people who are desperate.

batistuta9

JMNolan wrote: »

I think this is why tickets are different

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0723/892408-ticket-touting/

Reselling tickets has always had a stigma associated with it though, don't think it's anything to with enterprising criminals

BillyBobBS

I wanted to take the wife to Coldplay few weeks back but Seatwave wanted 200 a pop for tickets. Morally i refused to pay that even though she really wanted to go and i didn't get laid for a few days.

Paddy Cow

Boom_Bap wrote: »

Seatwave as a site is fine, the ethics behind it are all wrong.

If I buy a ticket for something at face value, can't go and want to put it back on the market for face value, seatwave should be the place for that.

If the owners of the site take a block of tickets from another site which they happen to own to sell out the gig, and resell the tickets at extortionist prices, that should not be allowed.

It's basically insider trading.

topper75

Paddy Cow wrote: »

It's basically insider trading.

I don't like it. But it is not insider trading. That is when you exploit information to hoodwink a third party. Or deliberately withhold information material to the value of the commodity.

There are only two parties here - the ticket seller and sundry consumers.

They sell at different prices to different buyers at different times. This is price discrimination and is quite normal and ethical. E.g. restaurant lunch and dinner bills vary quite a bit.

The price of anything ethically is the meeting point of the lowest the seller is willing to let go for and the highest the buyer is willing to pay.

If you really, really, really want to see Ed Sheeran, Kodaline, Coldplay or whatever bland (sic) du jour the herd feels is talented, you must fork out.

astrofool

It's basically the artists are setting the price too low for the demand so they can show they're non-elitist.

They should either do everything via ID and or credit card (something that is tied to 1 person, maybe allow one guest per CC), or they should just start off letting the market bid for all tickets (again, max of 1 or 2 per person) and cut the touts out of it.

Stonedpilot

B0jangles wrote: »

It would only be the same if you had bought the newest console from the same company you then used to resell it, and that company stood to make more from the second sale than the first.

The bottom line is that Ticketmaster stands to make MORE money from the Seatwave sale than they do from the original sale. It is 100% in their interest to make sure as many tickets are resold on Seatwave as possible, and by any means they are able to get away with.

It's a little like the Gamestop business model where the profit margin for them is massively bigger when they sell used games than from new ones, but instead of the used games being cheaper than the new ones, they are 2-5 times the original price.

Used games cheaper than new ones!?. Never seen this ever.Please explain.

jackofalltrades

Amirani wrote: »

Despite the majority of people being happy to live in a market-based economy whereby the value of commodities is set at the amount that people are willing to pay, for some reason people have an irrational emotional aversion to such when it comes to tickets. There are already measure in place against bulk buying of tickets that combat wholesale touting, but I don't see the issue in people valuing and buying/selling something they own for whatever fecking price they want. If the price is too high for you, don't buy the ticket...

Letting the market decide the price would be fine if everyone had the same chance of buying a ticket, but they don't.
What were seeing in this case and in others, is people with preferential access f*cking over those who don't.

B0jangles

Stonedpilot wrote: »

Used games cheaper than new ones!?. Never seen this ever.Please explain.

What?

In case of misunderstanding, Gamestop makes most of its money on the sale of pre-owned (i.e. used) games. They buy used games from people for at most around 50% of that game's new price but will sell that copy on for maybe 10 euro less than the price of a brand-new copy. So they get a much higher 'cut' from used games than they do from new ones.

Similarly Ticketmaster makes a percentage off the sale of every ticket they sell at face value. The tickets that are resold via Seatwave are sold for much higher prices, so Ticketmaster (via Seatwave) makes a lot more per ticket on Seatwave.

To make it even clearer: If they take a 10% cut on both platforms, a 35 euro ticket sold via Ticketmaster makes them 3.50, that same ticket if resold on Seatwave for 200 euro makes them 20 euro.

Capt'n Midnight

judeboy101 wrote: »

If i buy a loaf of bread for a €1, and as i walk out the door of the shop someone offers me €1.01 for that loaf, should that be illegal? If you buy a ticket and someone wants to pay you more than its worth, where is the problem?

If I go to a shop to buy bread for a €1 and I find out they've already sold all the bread to the guy standing outside the door , even though they are only sell two loafs to each person that's one thing.

But if it's the last bread for the next few years and I know the shop is taking a backhander of €1 from the guy and the guy is selling it for €3 ?

judeboy101

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

If I go to a shop to buy bread for a €1 and I find out they've already sold all the bread to the guy standing outside the door , even though they are only sell two loafs to each person that's one thing.

But if it's the last bread for the next few years and I know the shop is taking a backhander of €1 from the guy and the guy is selling it for €3 ?

Then either be (a) the first person there when shop opens or (b) the guy giving the backhander.

B.A._Baracus

Never heard of Seatwave until now but it sounds gas because ticketmaster owns it.

So ticketmaster sells you the ticket in the first place. Then they can make a percentage of you selling it on. Genius.

Capt'n Midnight

judeboy101 wrote: »

Then either be (a) the first person there when shop opens or (b) the guy giving the backhander.

The problem is the guy and all his mates keep cutting in ahead of you or even uses the back door to the shop and the shop doesn't do anything to prevent this.

Hector Bellend

No.

The only way touting will stop is if people refuse to buy from them.

Simple. If you don't get a ticket at face value through official channels don't encourage these maggots by paying over the odds

Stonedpilot

B0jangles wrote: »

What?

In case of misunderstanding, Gamestop makes most of its money on the sale of pre-owned (i.e. used) games. They buy used games from people for at most around 50% of that game's new price but will sell that copy on for maybe 10 euro less than the price of a brand-new copy. So they get a much higher 'cut' from used games than they do from new ones.

Similarly Ticketmaster makes a percentage off the sale of every ticket they sell at face value. The tickets that are resold via Seatwave are sold for much higher prices, so Ticketmaster (via Seatwave) makes a lot more per ticket on Seatwave.

To make it even clearer: If they take a 10% cut on both platforms, a 35 euro ticket sold via Ticketmaster makes them 3.50, that same ticket if resold on Seatwave for 200 euro makes them 20 euro.

It's a little like the Gamestop business model where the profit margin for them is massively bigger when they sell used games than from new ones, but instead of the used games being cheaper than the new ones, they are 2-5 times the original price.

OK though the OP above meant used games cheaper than new. :cool:

freshpopcorn

I have no issue with people selling tickets for a higher value. I think the idiots are the people who are willing to pay above and beyond for these tickets are the problem.