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Why is it sold out already? The Ticket Con

November 20, 2008 · Filed Under Blather, Industry

The scenario: a show goes on sale. Even though you are all over your phones and the relevant website, all the tickets are sold out. Is it just a lottery? They can’t possibly have sold those 50,000 tickets that quick. How did it become ”sold out”, the very second tickets went on sale? I don’t understand.

And if they’ve “sold out”, how come there are loads of tickets though on those Secondary Ticketing sites such as Viagogo and Seatwave already?

Are there really that many people just buying to sell? And how come they can make everything work so fast? It is almost as if the promoters of the shows are giving large allocations directly to the Secondary Ticket sites.

Almost? Unsurprisingly a lot of them are!

Bit depressing isn’t it? In the search for new revenue streams, agents (who are acting on behalf of the artist) and promoters are giving allocations of the big live shows straight to the secondary ticketing market. If you didn’t know already, the “secondary ticketing market” is pretty much a tout market, where you auction off your tickets to the highest bidder.

Bah! What the **** is that about

The live industry has been in a boom-time for the last ten years, and this is exactly the sort of behaviour that will kill the goose that lays this particular golden egg. Remember £16 CDs? Remember the record companies burying Napster? Live shows aren’t an invincible source of cash - we might just stop buying tickets.

But seeing as the Government has bigger fish to fry, ticketing will carry on developing its own code of conduct, rather than having one imposed upon it. and it will probably be increasingly exploitative, as this looming reccession kicks in.

Whta do we think? It should be made public knoweldge exactly what allocations are going where, as at the moment there is a big silent con going on; a con that is rotting away at the core of the live scene.