Here's a simple way to stop scalping. Can't we copy it?

Other countries are cracking down on ticket resellers. In New Zealand, it keeps happening – and no one seems to care.

When the British dance producer Fred Again came to New Zealand for a series of surprise pop-up shows last year, the scalpers came out in force. Tickets with a face value of $200 were being listed at three times the price, sometimes more. “It’s daylight robbery,” one gutted fan told RNZ about prices reaching $600.

Some gave up while others were so desperate to go they gave in and paid those sky-high prices – and then found they’d been scammed.

In Australia, more than 500 scalpers were estimated to have used bots to buy up tickets to Fred Again’s tour. This was estimated to have made them $1 million in profit, or about $2000 each in easy money. We don’t have exact data for New Zealand, but you can bet ticket resellers made plenty on his shows here too.

That was a year ago. You’d think we’d have learned something. Yet the exact same thing is happening for concerts all around the country. Right now, resellers on Viagogo are offering a floor ticket to see Slipknot at their Spark Arena show in March for $580. A Dua Lipa seat in April will set you back $1027. Tickets for Drake’s upcoming shows at Spark Arena are going for as much as $2354.

All that is happening all of the time, snaring unsuspecting punters, those who aren’t sure how Viagogo works and believe they’re dealing with a legitimate ticket company thanks to Google searches, promoted listings and countdown timers. Think of almost any show or festival and there are inflated tickets being scalped for them.

I was tapping out names of artists and festivals into Viagogo while researching this piece when I came across something astonishing. It’s this: a single ticket to see Chris Stapleton listed for a whopping $21,137. That’s not a joke. His shows have been sold out for months but someone’s decided they might find a sucker willing to pay $21,137.

Yet many of those tickets may not exist in the first place. “One trend we’ve noticed since the pandemic is there’s a lot of speculative ticketing. That’s where tickets are being listed that haven’t been purchased,” Adam Webb, from the UK anti-scalping collective FanFair Alliance told me a while back. He showed me how fake tickets were listed for a run of Lorde shows by overseas scalpers. “A lot of the tickets just don’t exist.”

Time and time again we’ve been told this can’t be stopped. There’s nothing that can be done. So we have Live Nation-led initiatives like the completely cursed practice of dynamic pricing and its own ticket platform, Ticketmaster Resale. The company says these are anti-scalping measures but some artists call it a “scam” based on greed. There’s no denying it’s led to jacked-up prices for many shows that come our way.

In Aotearoa, the only protective measures we have against scalping are around major events, like All Blacks matches or World Cup events, for which tickets cannot be on-sold. This Stuff story from last year details how an MBIE consultation suggested platforms like Viagogo and Ticketmaster Resale be covered by laws; nothing happened, and it all ground to a halt. But the Commerce Commission did win a six-year battle with Viagogo to bring it under New Zealand law.

Even still, for most events, scalping is fair game. It’s allowed. Anyone can do it. We’re told nothing can be done. So nothing has been done.

Yet, the UK has just found a way.

And it’s so simple.

The Guardian reports the UK government has announced plans to crack down on secondary ticketing platforms, an initiative that will limit how many tickets resellers can list, and cap their profits at 30% over the original ticket price. After the Oasis debacle, it will also consult on dynamic pricing, where the same rules may apply.

(The Guardian has led the way in reporting on this topic: if you haven’t already, their piece on the secret plot by touts to undermine anti-scalping reforms is well worth a read.)

Will it work? Every industry representative spoken to by The Guardian supports these measures, with my friends at FanFair Alliance calling them “gamechanging”.

“These suggested measures are potentially gamechanging. Other countries, notably Ireland, have demonstrated how legislation to prevent the resale of tickets for profit can massively curb the illegal and anti-consumer practices of online ticket touts and offshore resale platforms. The UK simply needs to follow their example.”

This comes after Australia announced similar plans to put an end to dynamic pricing, among other online sales tactics, after Green Day fans ended up paying $500 or more for tickets being sold through the official platform, Ticketmaster.

It really is that easy. Limit the profits and you stop the incentive for scalpers to scalp. If we didn’t have scalpers, we wouldn’t have dynamic pricing, so Live Nation wouldn’t be able to charge $550 for a $250 SZA ticket. Whether it’s from legitimate or illegitimate sources, scalping sucks, and fans shouldn’t be punished for wanting to see their favourite artist live.

These measures are well overdue. The only question is, when will New Zealand do something about it?

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