How to stop touting

okidoki987

As the title says, getting *****d off with all the touting going on at the moment. U2, Oxegen etc so it got me thinking of a way to stop this happening and I've come with the following solution.
Ticketmaster continue to sell tickets the way they do with 2 changes
(A) Only 2 tickets per person allowed no matter what the concert/gig/event.
If your mates want them, let them queue like others do or use the Internet
or get someone to queue with you.
(B) DO NOT Post the tickets out until at least 2 weeks before the event.
This means that the only tickets available to be "touted" would be the ones bought in person from a Ticketmaster outlet and if there's a 2 p.p. limit then that won't be many. Ticketmaster can also check the name and address of each Internet applicant so they can stop multiple requests.
People would still be able to buy them on-line but if you can't get them into your hand until 2 weeks before, this would put a stop to the touting that is going on at the moment.
Any thoughts or better suggestions?

steveland?

In Stockholm I think it is you have to give your name and it's associated with your ticket so you have to show ID to get in and show you bought the ticket yourself...

Not quite sure about this but it's a good idea...

Thing is you wouldn't be able to give your ticket to a friend if you weren't able to go...

joejoem

capital punishment - public floggins of touters before the gig in the arena

LegacyUser

same with glastonbury, you need id to get in.

seems the way to go.

the_syco

steveland? wrote:

In Stockholm I think it is you have to give your name and it's associated with your ticket so you have to show ID to get in and show you bought the ticket yourself...

I think this was tryed over here, a while back. Don't know how successful it was, tho.

AARRRGH

As far as I know there is a law waiting to be approved which will ban tickets touting.

prospect

okidoki987 wrote:

(B) DO NOT Post the tickets out until at least 2 weeks before the event.

I agree fully, but the promoters would be steaming about this.
Remember Robbie Williams released his tickets months before the phoenix park gig!
Sold out 40K tickets at €50 per ticket average, is €2Mill sitting in their bank accounts earning interest. So they would make a whack of money, even if the concert is cancelled and refunds given out...

Sleepy

You could sell someone a receipt for their ticket and only issue the tickets in the week or two before the gig.

Personally I'd like to see the ID system go ahead. All it would take is the ability to transfer a ticket to someone else's name if you couldn't make the concert yourself after buying the tickets.

AARRRGH

Also, the promotors/ticketmaster don't give a **** about touts. They just want their money.

okidoki987

You could sell someone a receipt for their ticket and only issue the tickets in the week or two before the gig.

If you only sent the tickets to the name and address that bought them,
you wouldn't have touts selling receipts as they could walk away with the tickets even if somebody bought them from them (woudl you trust a tout?)
That way only the people who bought them could get them.

steviec

With certain gigs where its so obvious that touting is gonna happen(eg U2) why don't the promoters just charge more in the first place? If for example tickets started out at 100 euro then only the people who really wanted them would buy them, nobody would end up paying a tout 200 euro because demand would have dropped sufficiently for everyone to get a ticket. Touts would get nothing, the people actually responsible for making the event happen get more, and the people actually going to the gig would be paying about the same on average, except you wouldn't have lucky people paying a quarter the amount that unlucky people did.

preilly79

treat it like booking a flight online. you go to ticketmaster, select your tickets and dates, enter the names of the 'passengers' or passport number. that info will be printed on the ticket. the person then has to present their passwport at the gate.

if a person wants to sell the ticket then a change fee will be needed. the old ticket becomes null and void, and a new ticket will be issued with the new owners name. just charge a packet for the change fee.

preilly79

oh another thing i wanted to mention.

i know somebody in ticketmaster who had their hands on a thousand U2 tickets. they then sold them. this they said is a common occurance for big name gigs like U2 where they know they will make a killing. he knows of MANY people in ticket master who did this for the U2 gig. so if you ever wondered how so many tickets could 'sell out' so quickly, you now have an answer.

certain ticketmaster staff are no better than touts IMHO. makes ya sick dont it?

odie

What about the touts selling Live 8 tickets on Ebay.....sign up now and offer 10 million squids for em.....maybe that might put em off.....it's a joke....ebay allowing touts to sell free charity tickets....Hang the touts from the nearest african bush tree.

OFDM

Touting tickets for concerts is not illegal but touting tickets for sports events is???

It's a sad world when touting is legal, but hosting a bit torrent file isn't.

besty

biometrically tagged tickets. dont ask me how, but it would be quite cool

Raphael

odie wrote:

What about the touts selling Live 8 tickets on Ebay.....sign up now and offer 10 million squids for em.....maybe that might put em off.....it's a joke....ebay allowing touts to sell free charity tickets....Hang the touts from the nearest african bush tree.

Ebay are in talks to ban the sale of those tickets, it's in another thread in this forum

netwhizkid

Originally Posted by joejoem
capital punishment - public floggins of touters before the gig in the arena

I would almost agree with that ! Last yr the battle i had to tickets for the All Ireland Kerry v Mayo, Eventually i got mine pure luck as far as i'm concered it was. It was disgraceful to see tickets for sale in Dublin after for between €500 to €1,000 a piece these people should be skulldragged as far as i'm concerned they are only scum, The ordinary fan like me quite often misses out encount of them. Tickets were also on Ebay for UK£1,500 or nearly €2,000 This is disgraceful and a way has to be found for stopping it. I know the same sort of thing goes on with soccer and music tickets too. I think tickets should be only available from The said promoter ie. Gaa, FAI or whatever Music company is involved and any one else selling them should be prosecuted for Illegal sales.


Regards netwhizkid

theCzar

besty wrote:

biometrically tagged tickets. dont ask me how, but it would be quite cool

"that's €40, And with the service charge, that comes to a total of €500." plus you couldn't sell tickets legitimately. :rolleyes:

if you want to help stop touts, the scum of the earth then
1) don't sell tickets to them, sell spares direct to people who want them
2) sell at face price, no more
3) Don't buy tickets from them, you don't need to see destinys child that much, cop on!

Hobbes

Raphael wrote:

Ebay are in talks to ban the sale of those tickets, it's in another thread in this forum

Actually geldof said on TV ebay were scum (sic) and should be hacked, then said any hackers out there should attack them. 10 mins later all the tickets for live8 were screwed up with silly bids. ebay have pulled all live8 bids now.

rugbug86

i think they should take names and ask for ID at the door. fair enough there's more administration involved and there would have to be some sort of facility to let people change there mind about going/not being able to go but its the only thing i can think of.

or maybe make all the tickets that you collect them at the door.

Franky Boy

Touts....What a problem!



My solution is to "line em all up and gun em all down"!

skywalker

What country is it that has a rule that their is a designated place for selling tickets for each event(eg. somewhere like say oconnell st). You can only legally resell tickets in this area, and only for face value. Anyone wanting to buy a ticket will congregate there, and guards are there to make sure no touting goes on.

Sounds like a good (better than our) system to me.

jor el

The problem of touting will go away when idiots stop paying way over the odds for tickets that they don't really need. It's not like the world will end if you miss Oxegen or even U2 :eek:

By the comments on this thread I'd say I'm preaching to the converted as I don't believe any of you have bought from touts (judging by some of the colourful descriptions of said scum bags) but there are plenty of people out there who do, obviously.

As has already been said, Ticketmaster don't care about touts because they get their money either way. Introducing methods to thwart touting will only cost them more and they won't like that. So not only should you not buy from touts, you shouldn't buy from Ticketmaster either. And yes I know this means you'll never be able to buy just about any tickets.

the jew

I don't have a problem with touting, it's just good business sense. If someone really wants to see u2, then maybe they should have gotten up earlier that morning to queue, everyone that bought tickets from the agents did. A shop buys goods at price X and then charges us X+their cut, whats the difference with buying a u2 ticket for €60 and selling it for €500, if someone is going to pay for it, then let them and fair play to whoever made the profit. In the case of printing your name on the ticket, for really big concerts that wouldn't be very realistic, in the case of u2, all the tickets were sold out in whatever amout of minutes yet ticketmaster agents were still selling them for about 90 minutes after that happened, any of you think of how? Cos each agent printed whatever their max quota is, if they needed to print your name on it every time then it would take bloody ages. In the case of GAA tickets going on sale at mad prices, I feel sorry for those people, cos it's not like you can just queue up early one morning and buy tickets for the all Ireland or whatever.
Touting exists cos the demand for it exists, and I'd imagine it's gonna stay regardless of any laws.

OFDM

I have no problem with people reselling their tickets for face value, but they really should consider adding on an "administration fee" like the way ticketmaster do.

OFDM

the jew wrote:

A shop buys goods at price X and then charges us X+their cut, whats the difference with buying a u2 ticket for €60 and selling it for €500,

Agreed. Why should someone be prevented from reselling something they bought just because it's in high demand? If someone were to buy up loads of the next "Tickle-me Elmo" craze toy to come out at Christmas and sell them on eBay when they're sold out in the shops, should they be prevented from doing that too?

Fair enough, touting free tickets for a political concert like Live8 (where the cause is charitable) is morally questionable, but touting tickets for everything else on a website like eBay (as opposed to on the streets where a trading licence should be required) is fair game as far as I'm concerned.

RainyDay

The problem with the requirement to show ID at the door is the massive increase in manpower and delays in queueing/access that it would entail. As an alternative, I'd suggest cinema-style ticket collection machines inside the venue. So you arrive at the venue, pop your laser/credit card into the machine, get your tickets, and have to hand them over straight away, i.e. no opportunity to pop back outside. This would need to be combined with a refund policy, so that if you can't make a gig, you simply cancel your booking beforehand and get your money refunded - you don't get the chance to sell on your tickets at all.

WhiteWashMan

actually, i see 2 ways of doing it.

and using ebay is one of them.

you put tickets up for public bidding, then people will pay as much or as little for a ticket as they want. it also makes it very hard to judge the value of a ticket for a tout to give out a price.

the other is to make tickets available on the day. if you have 50, 000 tickets, and you hold back 5-10,000 tickets, then you should only need to pay face value. again, this proves a problem to touts when it comes to them selling tickets above face value.

sure, there are loads of problems surrounding both of these methods, but they are processes which i belive would help to solve the problem of over priced tickets.

okidoki987

the other is to make tickets available on the day

The problem here is that the guards/concert promoters/venues won't want 20,000 people hanging around trying to get tickets for a gig.
Could see a lot of trouble with withholding tickets.

WhiteWashMan

like i said

sure, there are loads of problems surrounding both of these methods, but they are processes which i belive would help to solve the problem of over priced tickets.

the thing is that tickets need to be available to purchase, so that it makes touts redundent. its simply a process, not a be-all and end-all solution.

HelterSkelter

okidoki987 wrote:

(A) Only 2 tickets per person allowed no matter what the concert/gig/event.
If your mates want them, let them queue like others do or use the Internet
or get someone to queue with you.

And what happens if a group of 4 want to go and you want to sit together? If you book on the internet as 2 seperate transactions you will be allocated different seats.

To be honest I have no problem with touting. If there is a demand for any other product there seems to be no problem with people upping the price. Yet everyone gets all moralistic when it comes to concert tickets. Air flight tickets are one example I can think of. If the plane is nearly full they up the last few ticket prices to crazy prices because they know there is a demand. I remember looking at a Dublin to Stansted flight on the Ryanair site for the following day and they wanted €199 each way NOT including taxes!!

So what's wrong with someone buying something and selling it on for a higher price if there is enough demand.

In saying that I also don't have any problem with ticketmaster putting in measures to try to make sure the tickets go to the real fans.

jor el

The problem with touting is that the touts buy up so many of the tickets that a lot of people who want to go along cannot buy them. The only option left to anyone who really wants to go is to pay over inflated prices to the touts. If people refused to pay though then the touts would be out of pocket and would soon stop.

Air flight tickets are one example I can think of. If the plane is nearly full they up the last few ticket prices to crazy prices because they know there is a demand.

That analogy has no relationship to touting. The concert promoters/artists/ticket seller do not put up the cost of the tickets when they are running low, they sell them all at the same price. It's a totally separate third part that is hiking up the price.

Your analogy would work if say I bought 20 tickets for a particular flight I knew would be popular (Paris or Rome on Valentines maybe) and then when the airline have no seats left I sell on the tickets at an over-inflated cost to desperate romantics trying to impress the girlfriend.

WhiteWashMan

jor el wrote:

The problem with touting is that the touts buy up so many of the tickets that a lot of people who want to go along cannot buy them.

yes, and if there were tickets available to buy, then you wouldnt get touts, so it would become poitless for them to exist.

however, i would see ticket prices going up a lot for that to happen. which is fine for me, but its not fine for students etc.

TheBigLebowski

I don't see a problem with touts at all. They have something that other people want. Obviously the price goes up. It goes back to the very basics of trade. Supply and demand. Do we ban property developers who buy up hundreds of houses and sell them on for huge profits? No. I have bought tickets from touts plenty of times and would do it again.