Open letter to Ticketmaster

Hello Ticketmaster,

I just love going to concerts! For my own amusement, I just added up the tickets in my drawer and found I’ve spent over £1,400 on gigs the last three years, excluding any administration fees. A big part of this money, I’ve spent on your site, ticketmaster.co.uk, and I’m a happy customer who keeps coming back for more (even if I sometimes can be annoyed with the costly and inconvenient recorded delivery).

This morning, I went on to your site to look for tickets to General Fiasco at Islington Academy on 27th October and wasn’t particularly surprised to find that all tickets had sold out. This is pretty much the norm these days and I missed to book when the tickets went on sale. Fair enough. However, there was a link offering me to buy tickets on your marketplace GetMeIn instead, for £76 – £109. That’s right, £109 for a ticket with a face value of £8! That’s a 1,200% profit margin!

Ticket touts who buy up all tickets for gigs within minutes and then sell them at an insultingly high profit is a big problem for us music fans. If I’m not able to get online within the first hour when tickets go on sale, there is often no point bothering as they will all be sold out anyway and already up for sale on the touting sites. As the leading internet-based ticket company (and indeed owned by one of the largest concert organisers), you should not encourage this and definitely not facilitate it or take active part!

Until you have either capped the prices on GetMeIn at the face value of the tickets or – better still – removed completely the link to this touting site from ticketmaster.co.uk, you will from now on be my last choice when it comes to buying tickets. I will also share this opinion with anyone I talk to on the subject.

I believe I know what your response to this email (if any) will be. ”Our mission is to make sure as many music fans as possible get to see the concerts they want” but that’s not enough. You’re missing the part ”without those fans getting their hard-earned cash stolen by muggers who don’t contribute in any way to the music scene”.

I’m looking forward to your response.

Kind regards,
Magnus

7Etikett: musik