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I welcome the development of Slessor Gardens as a music
venue and I hope that it is a success. I do have concerns though that the
council has become complicit in ripping-off music fans. Slessor Gardens
belongs to the council, the council is hiring it out to music promoters who are
then selling tickets which quickly make their way on to the secondary ticket
market at much more than face-value. Often the secondary ticket selling
website is closely associated with or even the same company as the primary or
face-value ticket selling website. There are allegations of collusion
between websites which allow re-sale website to harvest large numbers of
tickets for sale at above face-value.
People
unable to get tickets from the ticket website often end-up buying tickets from
re-sale websites from people or companies who have never had any intention of
attending the concert. For example, Olly Murs tickets went on sale a week ago on Friday,
only a couple of hours after they went on sale one re-selling website
Stubhub claimed to have 22 tickets available for this concert, tickets for this
concert are priced at either £43.45 or £60.50, on Stubhub the prices varied
from £75 to £94.25.
I understand
that some people who buy tickets today for a concert in July will be unable to
attend due to illness or work commitments for example, but it beggars belief that
22 people bought tickets for a concert on Friday morning with the intention of going
and before lunchtime had worked out that they were unable to attend and had
already put their tickets up for sale on a re-sale website, and this only on
one website.
I know that
many young people in Dundee were disappointed to apparently miss out on tickets
to see Little Mix. It is therefore a little surprising to see that on
just two of the re-sale websites Getmein and Viagogo nearly 300 tickets were
available priced between £76.89 and £187 each for this 'sell-out'
concert. Surely there cannot be 300 people who bought tickets for this
concert and cannot now go.
I am a
football fan and my understanding is that if you stood outside Dens or
Tannadice and tried to sell tickets for more than their face value you risk
being arrested. Why do similar rules not apply online? It is
alleged that many of these resellers use technology to harvest tickets which
are put up for sale online at face value and that they only do this with the
intention of trying to cash in by selling at inflated prices. Some of
these re-sale websites are linked to original sale website, for example Getmein
is owned by Ticketmaster. This needs to be regulated.
I think that
people or companies profiteering on the sale of tickets should be ashamed of
themselves. There needs to be much more regulation of this
industry. There is a need for much more transparency. The UK
Government is looking at this issue and I have written to the Secretary of
State for Culture, Media and Sport, Karen Bradley, asking when the UK
Government is going to take action to protect the interests of music fans.
Dundee City
Council should look to create contracts with promoters at Slessor Gardens and
elsewhere which prevent music fans from being ripped-off. The way the
market works just now is at best unethical and should be made illegal. I
want Slessor Gardens to develop as a music venue but I am appalled that the
council is colluding with sharp practice by music promoters. I have
written to the council asking them to look into this matter and I would hope
that before any other concerts are arranged that Dundee City Council has
come up with a way of preventing fans being ripped-off.