Comments on: Why ticket sales on eBay should not be restricted

By: TameBay : FA cancel Wembley under 21’s football tickets

TameBay : FA cancel Wembley under 21’s football tickets — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:38:52 +0000

[...] That’s the email that holders of tickets for the England Under 21s at Wembley will have received when they listed their tickets on eBay. Whilst I take the view that if you have a ticket there should be nothing to stop you selling it any more so than any other commodity, the sale of football tickets is highly regulated. eBay have very clear policies which ban the sales of football tickets. Not only that but unauthorised football ticket sales are illegal in the UK. [...]

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 13:46:37 +0000

Ticket sales *SHOULD* be restricted. The touts create a false demand, and the difference between tickets and, say, a new games console, the tickets are time and stock limited. I can wait for my new games console when they ship a new batch to my local shop.

It would be better if eBay would pass the face value & postage/booking fee on to the seller, and donate anything paid over & above that to charity.

That way, the buyer gets the ticket at face value, the seller gets their money back (which is fair if the seller bought the ticket(s) with the intention of attending in the first place), and the excess paid by the buyer goes to a good cause.

By: TameBay : 1328% Tickets growth on eBay under threat

TameBay : 1328% Tickets growth on eBay under threat — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 10:49:02 +0000

[...] We’ve discussed tickets many times on TameBay, just what makes a concert ticket different to any other commodity that’s in short supply? If someone has something I want at a price I’m willing to pay why should the government restrict my right to purchase? At the end of the day if a concert organiser wishes to ensure tickets are not resold they should take some lessons from the organisers of this years Glastonbury concert. Exploitation and excessive profiteering by touts puts tickets out of the reach of real fans – it is a corrosive force in entertainment. We are determined to protect consumers against this – Tessa Jowell [...]

By: Graham Forsdyke

Graham Forsdyke — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:54:00 +0000

Totally agree.

If there’s a big mark-up on touted tickets, it only proves that the organisers got the price wrong in the first place.

By: Biddy

Biddy — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:46:00 +0000

*applauds*
Can’t argue with any of that. The thing people seem to say is that it “stops genuine fans” going to events. So I can to an extent understand the argument for restricting the supply to one individual: just as HP wouldn’t want you to be the sole supplier of their printers, I don’t think any one ticket tout should be able to buy up significant proportions of the tickets for one event – but why that then needs to translate into no one at all can buy a ticket or half a dozen tickets and sell them to someone else… that makes no sense at all.