Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll know that Radiohead have announced their first Australian tour in nearly a decade later this year.
Fans rushed to buy tickets this morning after they went on sale as online ticket merchants struggled to cope with demand as literally tens of thousands of fans flooded online.
Tickets were snapped up in literally minutes by those lucky enough to be able to access the website, but no sooner had the shows sold out that tickets started appearing on online auctions websites such as eBay for up to $600 a piece.
Fans who missed out on tickets are fuming at potentially missing out to scalpers but Chugg Entertainment who are bringing Radiohead to Australia say there isn’t much they can do.
Speaking to Street Press Australia the promoters stressed that they are “very disappointed in the resale of tickets via eBay. We are doing what we can to police this, but unfortunately… it is difficult for promoters, ticketing agencies and venues to enforce”.
Furious at opportunist scalpers, promoter Michael Chugg is now calling for the federal government to intervene and introduce new legislation that would curb the frowned upon practise.
“The response to these Radiohead shows is a perfect example of the ongoing issues with ticket scalping and Chugg Entertainment hopes that the voices of impassioned Radiohead fans will be heard,” he said.
He also encouraged understandably frustrated fans to take their complaints to top say he “implores the forum to continue so that both the federal government and state governments will pay attention and introduce enforceable anti-scalping legislation throughout Australia.”
“On a higher level, concert promoters across the country, along with LPA [Live Performance Australia] need to be involved in driving a change.”
Until new legislation is passed however Chugg will continue to use what options are available to them – including cancelling ticket numbers that have been clearly bought to be scalped at inflated prices.
In a statement posted on their official Facebook page Chugg Entertainment stressed that they “will not cancel a ticket unless we can determine with absolute certainty which exact seats or general admission tickets breach the conditions of sale, as we would otherwise risk cancelling tickets purchased by true fans like the majority of you.”
“As you can see when you go on to eBay, professional scalpers list tickets with vague details on seating locations but rarely ever get specific about seat or ticket numbers, as this information would allow us to track who they are and cancel their tickets.”
“With that said, we are regularly scanning listings to look for tickets that we are able to cancel and will continue to do so up until the tour. If you come across a listing that specifies the exact ticket allocation (including seat numbers or exact GA ticket numbers) please send the page link to us at [email protected] and we will look into it immediately.”
According to some ticketholders, Ticketmaster have been contacting anyone who bought more than 4 tickets under the same name. Although Ticketmaster only allowed you to book four tickets as a maximum this limit was per-transaction and there was no limit on the number of transactions.
Ticketmaster are now reportedly taking back sales to one person in excess of four tickets regardless of the number of transactions in an effort to claim back some of the tickets that scalpers picked up this morning by purchasing tickets multiple times using the same name.
Although the reports are unconfirmed we would advise disgruntled fans to steer well clear of any eBay auctions as the tickets may have already been cancelled. Chugg have set up an official ticket swap Facebook page for ticket holders with extra tickets to sell legally to those who missed out.
