Ticketmaster is finally intending to close its secondary ticket websites Seatwave and Get Me In by October of this year. The sites were originally intended to allow users to sell unwanted tickets for music events, however it was often found to be abused by people who purchased tickets with the sole intention of reselling at a high price.
Instead, a new ‘fan-to-fan’ exchange on the Ticketmaster website itself will be established, in which customers can resell tickets for the same price or less; not for more as was permitted on the previous resale websites.
Of course, competitor websites such as Viagogo and Stubhub are still available to ticket touts. However, even promoters and artists have begun to ban tickets resold on those sites.
But this can only be seen as a step in the right direction in protection for consumers, and it is hoped that further issues associated with exploitative resale will be combated in the future, particularly with ongoing enforcement work by the Competition and Market Authority and Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
Indeed, earlier this year Ticketmaster were banned from claiming its ‘platinum’ seats have the “best available tickets” – such tickets could have costed upwards of three times as much as general tickets, but often provided nothing different in terms of quality of experience, according to the ASA.
Nonetheless, there is still express concern that paying for sold-out tickets will prevent consumers spending extortionate amounts of money, as it is expected by some that Ticketmaster will emphasise a ‘dynamic pricing’ model based on demand and supply for an event. In other words, the ‘platinum’ tickets are here to stay for sold-out popular events, or even potentially increase in incidence.
