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More than 900,000 tickets have been sold for Oasis's reunion tour, opening next week in Cardiff, but the overwhelming majority sold out following hours of queuing on the internet for real fans. Shortly after presales began, that same concert's tickets were offered for over £6,000 — about 40 times the prices at which they were made available. One tout bragged that one UK reseller made more than £500,000 in one year and some were potentially earning millions.
Automated bots and multiple identities have become go-to tools for game ticketing systems, with critics asking whether fraud is playing a role. A ticket-pulling boss in India admitted it was illegal to work from within the UK but said his business was immune to prosecution because it was based outside the country.
Commonplace the 'Queue Manipulation' and Resale Abuse
Veteran industry expert Reg Walker demonstrated how a semi-hidden online group abused software in creating 100,000 queue passes to grant their bots front-row access to tickets on sale day. He blamed resale platforms and ticketing companies for not being vigilant enough, particularly when hundreds of tickets are listed under one seller's profile.
One former Viagogo employee claimed that touts frequently listed thousands of tickets, well above the purchasing limits imposed by platforms such as Ticketmaster. Viagogo, though, said that 73% of sellers on its site sell five or fewer tickets and that some sellers are also clubs and promoters.
The issue is not just with music. An investigation by the BBC found 8,000 tickets for Arsenal's game against Chelsea on 16 March being sold on the black market above face value – despite reselling football tickets without permission having been a criminal offence since 1994. One UK semi-professional footballer, Bogdan Stolboushkin, reportedly made thousands of pounds by selling tickets on social media.
"Pre-sale speculative selling" — the practice of touts listing tickets they don't own — was also revealed. A minimum of 104 tickets for a Catfish and the Bottlemen concert were uploaded to Viagogo while they could still be purchased at Ticketmaster. Viagogo took down the listings after being shown the evidence.
Government Crackdown Faces Major Obstacles
The government in the UK is discussing a new law to restrict the price at which tickets can be resold to no more than face value plus 30%, higher penalties for touts and the introduction of a licence for resale platforms. But critics say more is needed. The same is happening with a law in Ireland, also passed in 2021. There, tickets to certain popular events are still being resold for as much as four times their face value.
Dame Caroline Dinenage, chairwoman of the culture committee, added the situation was a "minefield" for consumers and blamed both the government and big online platforms for not taking action. This investigation illustrates that there are a few instances of unethical — and even illegal — behaviour that still continue to exist and this investigation shows that.
Regulation of the resale market was in the election manifesto of new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, repeated the government's aim of making ticket money profitable for the live events industry, not for ticket touts. "We're fixing the broken ticketing market to help end the rip-off and encourage more people to get into our theatres and venues," she said.
