Online ticket exchanges like eBay, Viagogo and Seatwave breathed a sigh of relief this week after UK legislators published a report saying they would be reluctant to legislate the one billion pound industry.
While there is little argument over the need to clamp down on dubious practices, like selling tickets that were distributed for free charity events, the report does raise a more fundamental question that has sparked some debate.
Should bands share profits from tickets re-sold on the secondary market? When tickets to the recent Led Zeppelin concert were re-sold on the Internet, for example, they fetched an average of 7,425 pounds each, according to Seatwave, or around 60 times their face value. The sums involved can clearly be huge.
That particular concert may not be the best example in that it was a charity gig, in which case Led Zeppelin might argue that a worthy cause should have shared in the profits.
But in general, should bands benefit from tickets changing hands on sites like eBay? If they have already sold their ticket once for the price that they set, should they be paid a second time? Is it not the same as paying Ford once for a new car and again when it is sold second hand? Is this business nothing more than a supply-and-demand, free market concept?
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The tickets which were sold on Seatwave for the Led Zeppelin concert were for charity. Three pairs were donated by Jimmy Page and auctioned off for The ABC Trust.
- Posted by Adia JamesI seriously doubt that Led Zeppelin tickets sold for an AVERAGE of 7,500 pounds. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know how Seatwave calculated the average but I can tell you that most of the listings for Led Zeppelin passcodes on eBay before the O2 show were in the 1,000 to 2,500 pound range for a PAIR of tickets. I paid $1,300(about 650 pounds) for one ticket. Maybe they added in the amount paid by the guy who bought a pair of tickets at a charity auction for $170,000(or whatver it was)a couple of hundred times by mistake when they did their calculations.
As to who should get a cut of these exhorbitant prices, I say nobody. Not the band, not the scalpers. I think it should be illegal to sell tickets for more than 2X or 3X their face value. It’s obvious that demand will always be way ahead of supply for certain forms of entertainment including concerts by top bands. If bands didn’t have a modicum of respect for their fans, they would just charge $2,000 a ticket for any high profile concert. Led Zeppelin could have. But they didn’t. That’s why they call scalpers or touts ‘parasites’. They add nothing of value, they drive up prices and they make a profit. Remember, bands choose not to charge the maximum they could for concert tickets to keep them accessible to fans. I miss the days when you could show up at the ticket counter the day tickets went on sale and get good seats for $20-30 (actually, I remember when they were $8!) Now, you go online or to the ticket counter and three seconds after the tickets have gone on sale, the show is sold out or all the good seats are gone. This isn’t free-market economics, it’s fraud. Someone on the inside is obviously funneling tickets to the scalpers. That’s why it’s wrong. As a group, scalpers have a near monopoly on concert tickets and this is against the law, even in a capitalist society.
- Posted by VinceYes they should: tickets are not ruddy antiques!
Well, not usually, anyway.
- Posted by Keith M WarwickBands should receive what they ask for. Scalpers (and most of us believe they are the culprits here) should be taxed like folks making an honest living. The amount left from their endeavors will then be diminished and the criminal behavior no longer worth their while.
- Posted by Cynthia