The Fiasco Of Ticket Entry ID At Alicia Keys' London Concert (Feature)
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Written by Dave Ball
A little over a week ago, June 13th to be precise, American superstar Alicia Keys performed a special one-off show at London’s Royal Albert Hall to rave reviews. The soulful singer was celebrating the 10th anniversary of her multi Grammy award winning debut album ‘Songs In A Minor’ in a stripped down performance without the usual glitz and glamour, instead wowing the audience with just her voice alongside her piano.
Reviews of the show were almost universally praising, describing it as “spine-tingling”. The performance without any band or backing singers led one reviewer to describe her as displaying “the prowess of a truly remarkable virtuoso”. Sounds like the sort of once in a lifetime event you’d love to have got tickets for? Well, perhaps not, as many ticket holders found the evening a pretty stressful experience.
First of all, some background. On announcing the show it was made known that ticketing for this event would be different to your usual gig. A decision was made that the organisers didn’t want anyone selling their tickets to anyone else so chose to go with a name checking system to avoid touting.
This is where the problems began. BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’, a consumer news show hosted by Winnifred Robinson, decided to track the show and whether this system could work. What they found appears to be that it didn’t.
As part of their research, BBC spoke with Seatwave who are one of the leading ticket re-seller’s for people who no longer want or can use their tickets for an up-coming show, designed to give people who missed out on sold-out events the opportunity to get hold of tickets. As discussed in previous features this is a system many people are unhappy with but what can’t be denied is that tickets are sold at whatever market value deems it to be. Take this year's Reading & Leeds festival as an example, tickets are selling for up to 50% less than face value as the demand for tickets is actually lower than expected, therefore giving people who felt they wouldn’t be able to afford to go an opportunity they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
Seatwave were asked if they had put measures in place for this particular performance and the organisers ensured that ‘no resold tickets’ would be allowed entry. Seatwave confirmed that although they had explained the restrictions to everybody selling and buying tickets for the show, several hundred customers bought tickets through them (and therefore arrived not as the person who’s name was on the ticket) and not a single one were refused entry to the venue. Seatwave claim that if the Royal Albert Hall had refused entry to every ‘resold ticket’ about 50% of the room would have been empty.
That’s not to say life was easy for anyone who arrived on the night. Reports suggest a lot of people were hassled by security on arrival, even people who had bought their tickets directly from the box office at Royal Albert Hall told they didn’t have the correct ID in many cases. It does seem that these people were all let in eventually but not without the stress and aggravation of being grilled by what one attendee described as “Gestapo tactics” used by some members of staff. Seatwave’s blog also suggests that the only area people were actually turned away from was the door where the BBC reporter was placed.
So, what was the point of this in the end? You take it as a given that the organisers of live events want everyone attending to have a good time, enjoy the show and want to come back again. You certainly don’t expect to be confronted on arrival to a performance you have been looking forward to, often for many months and have your evening spoiled even before you have the chance to get inside.
Measures like these are designed purely to give the impression venues and promoters are stamping down on touting. As reported here previously, many of the largest ticket sellers such as Ticketmaster and See Tickets have their own secondary re-sale sites. They understand these sites provide a very necessary service and have been the main driver in ridding our music venues of touts who loiter outside concerts taking handfuls of cash for tickets which may or may not be genuine.
If you wanted a ticket for this gig and missed out at the time of release then, if organisers had their way, you would have had no chance whatsoever of obtaining a ticket. Generally tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday mornings. How many of you reading this are working at that time and therefore unable to spend 10, 20 minutes or longer on the internet hammering the ‘refresh’ button to get through the queuing systems? If you’re unable to even try and get tickets should you be punished? Of course not.
Another issue here is driving ticket prices up rather than down. As mentioned above, secondary sites sell tickets lower than market value as well as higher. Speaking to Edward Parkinson, UK director of fan-to-fan exchange Viagogo in February, he told us that “over the past 12 months, around 50% of tickets sold on Viagogo sold at or below the face value”. Meanwhile, inflation on tickets at the primary sellers has rocketed in recent years with prices generally over 100% more expensive now than they were for equivalent’s 5-10 years ago.
It is all about market value. What I may consider a fair price for a ticket to see a band I’ve wanted to see for many years, someone on a re-union one-off tour or a particularly special event, you may consider to be over inflated but surely, as customers we have the right to choose.
Of course if you buy tickets for a gig under this ‘name check’ system and then can’t go because of some change in circumstance, then what do you do with your tickets? Most of us, particularly in the current economic climate can’t afford to just write off £40+ per ticket for something, why should we be told we’re not allowed to sell them to someone who can attend and is willing to pay a fair price.
While we understand paying over face value can be frustrating, outlawing a self regulated secondary resale marketplace would mean a return to the dark days where ticket touts wandered around venues and people paid cash, at vastly inflated prices, with no guarantee of real tickets. The current system may not be ideal for everyone but it does provide two valuable services. Firstly, a chance to purchase tickets for an event after it has sold out and secondly the peace of mind that whatever you choose to pay, your tickets will be legitimate ones.
This is an issue which is always going to divide the music industry but one thing you can be sure of is that any ticket you buy via Stereoboard.com will be a legitimate ticket whether bought from a primary seller or one of our approved secondary exchange sites.
If you were at the Alicia Keys show or have a view on whether ticket re-selling should be allowed let us know using the comments section below.
Check out Stereoboard's short film 'Access All Areas' which follows the experiences of a group of friends, who opt to go "off-road" obtaining their tickets, to blag their way backstage at a major gig and suffering dramatic consequences...
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
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This is where the problems began. BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’, a consumer news show hosted by Winnifred Robinson, decided to track the show and whether this system could work. What they found appears to be that it didn’t.
