#TOUTSOUT – Why haven’t ticket touts been stopped yet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3uVervDOcg
Over the past few years, tickets touts have taken their business online. Rather than just standing outside the venue, these people can now buy up hundreds of tickets using an online bot system and then resell them at a marked up price for profit. This is becoming a big problem for consumers and artists because both are losing out. Abbi Griggs is finding out what can be done to stop ticket touts.
IN: ( 5“ of actuality) I’m outside Wembley Stadium…
OUT: … watch Adele at this rate”
DUR: 7:07
Ticket touts and online bots have recently become such a big issue online. Ticket touts have always been around standing outside of venues before events, but now they have increasingly started using the internet to make a profit. They use online bots to bypass security checks which enable them to buy hundreds of tickets at once. From there, they sell these tickets on reselling sites where they can mark up prices and charge hundreds of pounds over their original face value price. Over the summer an organisation called The Fanfair Alliance was born, and their aim is to stop ticket touts and get music professionals to sign a declaration. I managed to get an interview with Adam Webb, a member of The Fanfair Alliance, and hear his thoughts on touts, why they’re such a big problem, and how we can stop them. I visited Adam at the organisations offices in Central London where I got to learn more about the touting business and what The Fanfair Alliance do.
Following this, I got to interview Niall Barclay from Scarlet Mist, the original ethical ticket exchange organisation where he talked about how touts buy up so many tickets, and the effect it has on fans. I also managed to follow someones story of trying to buy tickets to see Adele. I sat with Nathan whilst he searched the internet for reasonably prices Adele tickets, but with no luck he gave up on trying to purchase them. I hope that this story will make people aware that the ticket touting business is on an industrial size scale now that is effecting the music industry and its consumers. Missing out on concert tickets has happened to so many people due to touts harvesting up tickets when they go on general sale, and I hope legislation soon gets put in place to make it illegal. With the help of this story, I would like people to actively try and stop touts so that purchasing tickets is a fair playing field for everyone.