Sunday, May 11

Buying and Selling tickets

Here's a good question for you. If you have purchased a ticket to a concert, does the ticket belong to you or to the company which sold it to you? Assuming that there are no other issues (such as safety reasons, you don't want to sell a Manchester United = Arsenal ticket willy nilly otherwise you might have 2 ManU fans stuck in the middle of the bank of Arsenal seats and they will be spat upon at best and could be thumped at worst), there is no issue in selling on your tickets if you don't want to go there.

But till now, specially in the west, concerts did not allow tickets be sold on after the first sale, mainly on the grounds that the sell on was usually at a much higher price than the original sale price and the promoters of the event do not get a cut of the second sale. Well, so? You don't expect the iron manufacturer to get a cut of the price of the toaster being sold, do you?

But seems like we have a break in the current industry. See here. I quote:

Madonna is endorsing the sell-on of concert tickets, condemned by some concert promoters as scalping or touting, by making two leading companies in the secondary ticket market official partners for her forthcoming Sticky & Sweet tour of North America and Europe.

She is such a big industry figure that she can, conceivably, drive a stake through the heart of this pernicious practice. Would be quite interesting indeed. I, for one, would be very happy to purchase such second hand tickets, if I can pay for it, then why not? let the markets determine the right price of the tickets, not some poxy promoter.

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