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Ticket fraud does happen on secondary sites, says Radio 4
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 26 July 2013
Ticket fraud is on the rise and the secondary ticketing sites are being utilised by the fraudsters, or so says a report by Radio 4 consumer affairs programme ‘You And Yours’.
With both live music players and the Metropolitan Police expressing concerns about the rise of ticket fraud in recent years, as rogue sellers utilise the internet to appear legit while taking money for tickets that don’t exist, the BBC programme investigated claims that some fraudsters use ticket resale sits like Viagogo, Seatwave, Ticketmaster’s Getmein and eBay’s Stubhub to sell their non-tickets.
In theory the ticket touting websites, while still controversial within the music business for allowing individuals and companies to resell tickets at a considerable mark up, provide protection against fraudulent ticket sales, because sellers generally don’t get their money until after a gig has occurred, and the resale company provides a guarantee to the end consumer if there is a problem with the ticket they buy.
Indeed, Viagogo published a report on ticket fraud earlier this year, proposing its platform as a solution rather than catalyst to the problem.
However, ‘You And Yours’ says that sellers on the secondary sites can get their money before an event happens if they gain ‘trusted status’ by regularly selling genuine tickets. Some fraudsters know this, the programme said, and exploit the system, touting legit tickets for a period and then utilising their trusted status to commit a flurry of fraudulent sales.
The report alleged that one such seller had sold thousands of fraudulent tickets after gaining trusted status before complaints caused him to be cut off. And while the secondary sites will provide a refund to anyone who is sold a non-ticket via their platform, that doesn’t stop the buyer from having the disappointment of showing up to a gig venue and being turned away.
Confirming ticket fraud was on the rise, Reg Walker of The Iridium Consultancy told the Radio 4 programme: “In the last four months alone we’ve seen over 2000 [fake tickets]. We’ve seen more counterfeits in one venue than we’ve seen in the preceding six years. In the majority of cases the barcode is for another event, or it’s the same barcode from one ticket resold over and over again”.
It’s not entirely clear how frequently fraud actually occurs via the secondary sites, given the fraudster has to be pretty committed to the operation (conducting all the legit sales first to get trusted status), and will then only be able to sell fraudulent tickets for a short time before being found out. Though if said fraudster sells thousands of non-tickets in that time, that could still be a lot of disappointed music fans even if the actual number of people doing this via the resale sites is very small.
