Fighting back against ticket resale websites

I'm not the biggest Ed Sheeran fan, even though I do play a lot of him on my radio show on Spirit FM!

However, I have been delighted that he’s been such a prominent voice in the scandal of resale websites for tickets.

For years now, it’s felt like nothing would ever change but he’s been one of the increasing group of musicians speaking out about the use of these websites and the fact that some music fans have been totally ripped off.

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I’m sure you’ve been in a position yourself where you spend ages on a website trying to get tickets for a show only for them to sell out within minutes.

Now, you don’t mind losing out necessarily if it’s to someone else who is a genuine fan of the artist you are trying to see, but it’s infuriating to see them see them appear just moments later at more than twice or more of the face value of the original ticket!

This happened to me a few years ago when I was trying to get tickets to see the much-anticipated return of Kate Bush, I knew there was going to be a lot of interest, so I tried on two machines at the same time to get in the queue and after an anxious wait,

I was told the tickets had all gone, but this was just minutes after they had gone on sale!

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Sure enough, once I then looked on some of the secondary resale sites, the very same tickets I had been trying to get were then on sale for two or three times the original price.

Utterly disgraceful and especially when the website was being run by the same company, so they too were making money from the tout’s greed.

I hope we see this continue and genuine music and show fans will have a much better chance of getting to see our favourite artists.

All we need to do now is banish those ridiculous ‘admin’ charges that some sites enforce upon us, as they can no longer call them credit card fees.

:: Get in touch on Twitter @stuartmcginley

:: Hear McGinley in the Morning – weekdays 6-10 on Spirit FM

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