In the words of the immortal Eric Cartman, eBay really pisses me off. The online auction site has single-handedly (admittedly with a pretty bloody big hand) created a scalping industry where it’s become the accepted norm for people to buy tickets for hot events (music, sport, whatever) and then immediately resell them online for a quick profit at the expense of fans whose only failing was to be too slow off the mark to buy the tickets. The Princess Diana memorial concert sold out in 20 minutes and soon after the £45 tickets were priced at up to £300 per pair on eBay. Sensing a looming public relations disaster, eBay banned the re-sale Diana concert tickets saying…
“In view of the unique and commemorative nature of the Concert for Diana event and as a mark of respect for the memory of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, we’ve decided to prohibit the resale of tickets to this event on the site. Any tickets currently listed will be removed as soon as possible.”
I’d like to ask eBay a few questions:
Why couldn’t you fat-heads see the Diana scalpers coming?
Why did you only react after the PR shit-storm starting brewing?
Would you have been happy to make some cash out of the Diana tickets as long as you didn’t get any bad PR?
And, most importantly, why does the ‘unique and commemorative nature of the Concert for Diana’ qualify for special anti-scalping protection but regular concerts and sporting events don’t?
Before you answer, I have a confession to make: I’ve sold tickets on eBay. Twice.
I sold 4 tickets for British Sea Power in Bristol in April 2005 – I bought them for a gig that took place when I was on holiday in Paris. D’oh.
And I sold 3 tickets for Echo And The Bunnyment in Liverpool in December 2005. I meant to buy tickets for their London gig. Liverpool and London both begin with ‘L’. Hence my confusion.
Both sets of tickets were sold at a loss. Both times I was grateful(ish) to eBay for letting me recoup some money on my idiocy. And I’m sure the people who bought the tickets at knock-down prices were happy too.
But right now on eBay.co.uk there are “10,034 items found for tickets”.
Are there really that many genuine prize idiots like me who have mistakenly bought tickets for concerts they can’t go to? I doubt it. Maybe the 34 are idiots and the other 10,000 are scalpers, bleeding money from fans who want to follow their favourite bands or watch their team play or see The Sound of Music.
(Actually, one of the 10,034 is for “Vintage paper Platform Ticket Worthing” so maybe it’s not quite that many.)
On the back of my Morrissey ticket from his 8 December Wembley Arena gig it says:
“Tickets are non-transferable. Reselling a Ticket for profit/commercial gain without the express permission of the artisit’s management or promoter will make it void.”
So eBay won’t allow Diana concert ticket sales out of respect to her memory (but really to protect its own public image).
But it continues to allow sales of all other tickets for more than face value even though their resale is expressly forbidden by the ticket Ts & Cs.
Stop the scalping. It’s got to stop.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Cor blimey, guvnor. I always thought ticket touting was just supply and demand operating. I’ve never understood why people get so hot under the collar about it. I mean, the ticket sellers could try a bit harder to make it fair to the masses if they wanted to. Personally I’ve always wondered why the underprice their tickets. Not many other industries do this. So, if there’s a demand for an item, there will be arbitrageurs. Can you imagine a stock market if this supply/demand thing didn’t exist? So big deal, so people sometimes pay big prices to get tickets to gigs. So who is the victim in this? Maybe the Princess Diana charity should be a bit smarter in raising money, rather than hand it all over to the touts? (There, I’ve vented. I’ve waited years to do that. I feel so much better now. Now, where’s my sex toy?)
It would be a pretty weird stock market that had a “use by” date on the shares
The victim is the ‘true’ fan who ends up buying the tickets on eBay at inflated prices.
Perhaps Ticketmaster should just eBay all their tickets and cut out the middlemen. Heh.
Where’s your address?