Ticket resellers in the U.K. are hiring overseas purchasers as a way to secure large batches of tickets for profit, icing out regular fans looking to attend Taylor Swift and Oasis concerts.
An undercover investigation from the BBC alleges that large-scale ticket resellers, or “touts,” are said to be employing teams in India and Pakistan, called “ticket pullers,” who use sophisticated means of ticket purchasing — including automated software and gaming of the online queue system — as a way to circumvent per-person limits on ticket buys.
“They buy in bulk most of the time in the hope of reselling and making a profit,” an anonymous former Viagogo employee said. “I don’t know how they get their hands on them but I know that at some point they would have bought tickets in bulk in serious numbers. You’re not allowing a lot of people to get access because you’re hoarding the tickets.”
Viagogo refuted the employee’s claims to the BBC and did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Variety.
Before he was elected the UK’s Prime Minister last year, Keir Starmer listed ticket touting as a key part of his election platform. “Access to music, drama and sport has become difficult and expensive because of ticket touting. Labour will put fans back at the heart of events by introducing new consumer protections on ticket resales,” the Labour party’s 2024 manifesto read.
Ticket resales have been an ongoing problem in the U.S. as well, perhaps most dramatically around Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” in 2022. Skyrocketing prices and outright cancellations of ticket sales turned the ticket-buying process for that tour into chaos, causing Ticketmaster to cancel its public on-sale date.
“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift wrote on Instagram in the wake of the dustup.
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The Justice Department subsequently sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster for operating a ticketing monopoly.
“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” said then-Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services.”
That case is currently in discovery with a July 28 deadline for expert disclosures.
From Variety US