As the debate on scalping rages on, ITM gets the promoter’s perspective from one of Australia’s biggest; John Wall at Fuzzy.
One of the biggest issues in clubland these days is scalping. Or is it? Depends who you ask, certainly every time a big event sells out fast, tickets immediately appear on eBay at up to 3 or 4 times their face value. Events like Big Day Out, Field Day and Splendour In The Grass have been selling out faster than ever before, leaving many prospective customers without tickets. Some get angry and many blame scalpers for “buying up all the tickets”, thereby depriving genuine buyers of tickets at the original price. Others just think it’s wrong for someone to resell something at a higher price – basically being a ‘parasite’. Some think it’s a free market and just as someone can buy a painting and sell it later for more than the artist got, the same should go for anything else. If someone is willing to pay then who cares?
As a promoter, the advent of eBay has meant that scalpers – previously a ubiquitous but relatively insignificant presence around the entrance to events – have become much more visible, and therefore have angered customers, who in turn demand that something be done to stop scalping. We, of course, have looked closely at the issue and follow how many tickets change hands on eBay. For Fuzzy events in the past they haven’t made up a big proportion of the total capacity, the most being around 500 tickets for a 25,000 person capacity event. Even if there are 4 times as many tickets changing hands as we’re able to keep track of, this is still less than 10% of the capacity.
Today on eBay there are 147 people selling Field Day tickets. Most say they have one or two, but if even if the average was 10 each, that’s still only 5.9% of the entire capacity – about the same size as the free guestlist. Scalping isn’t what makes these events sell out fast – it’s the increase in demand from real customers – it’s why there are more and bigger events on – and, unlike 5 years ago, most people now have a fast internet connection and are happy to buy things online. Even when Splendour In The Grass introduced a rule that tickets had to have the purchaser’s name and date of birth so it couldn’t be transferred, the festival still sold out in a flash.
The thing is, of course, no matter how many times we tell people “scalpers didn’t buy all, or most, or even a big percentage of the tickets”, no-one will believe it. They don’t care about the statistics, it’s the principle of the matter. What really makes people upset about scalping is that others are profiting from the misery (or at least, the disappointment) of others. Scalping makes us angry as event organisers because it introduces a lot of negative feelings around our events, even though we put in a huge effort to try to make them a positive experience from start to finish.
We’re about to introduce a new system which should make it very hard to resell tickets. The trick is to make it hard for scalpers but easy for real customers. When you buy the tickets you’ll put in your name and date of birth, then we’ll send you an email with a barcode. You print it out and bring it to the party, along with your photo ID. You’ll be able to bring in a few friends with you, or you can put in the name and DOB of each person so they can come in separately. It’ll also be possible to make changes online (up to a point), so you’re not stuck with a ticket if you can’t come. There’ll also be a limit, so serial ticket transferrers will be barred from making changes.
This will make it easy for you, but hard for scalpers, as they’ll be trying to sell a printout with “THIS TICKET CAN BE CANCELLED AT ANY TIME BY THE ORIGINAL PURCHASER” in big letters across the top! If they keep buying tickets then changing the name, they’ll be banned from the system. We could go further and insist on everyone’s name and date of birth and never allow changes, but then we’d be making life harder for the 95% of people who are just buying tickets for themselves.
Hopefully that’ll make everyone happier… well, except would-be scalpers.
patrout says...
I agree that scalpers have been around since day one, but I think due to these events selling out in record times, alot of people are just turning to the first excuse for this, SCALPERS, but in reality electronic music is becoming more mainstream, techno killed the rockstar, these events are selling out due to every tom, dick and harry realising how GOOD festivals are and how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful city blessed with great events like field day. Great to hear you're creating a new system to prevent scalpers making a dirty dollar off these festivals, i'm very lucky to have acquired tickets to most of the banging parties this summer, BRING IT ON!
filou says...
good idea but aren't you a bit late for field day, your biggest party of the year?
M_adz says...
so there won't be any tickets, just barcodes?
djaudiophile says...
cool idea, too bad for those who like to keep the ticket stubs as a momento, you can now start a barcode collection! lol
turftalk says...
I will be attending field day 08, i am glad that i did get tickets and dont have to buy them off some ebayer. It really suxs when you missed out because some scalper bought them up for resell and you end up having to pay double the amount. Good work!
Blinky-Live- says...
Awesome Ed John!
phillis says...
Sounds Like a very sensible suggestion! It will allow real festval lovers to buy tickets and sort out who needs to go without being a pain like moshticks where everone has to go in together!!
qsnoop says...
I think these changes are great. However one of the major problems with buying tickets seems to be that often the suppliers website crashes or slows to a snails pace (harbourlife this year). Come on guys its not like you werent expecting huge demand in the first few minutes!
Lee Michaels says...
Why not mandate that tickets can't be resold? And for the few legitimate people that require a refund, it is done so with a penalty (so promoters cover administrative costs) or there is no penalty and the promoter re-sells at a premium. It's only a small ticket number versus the demand so a lotto system for the returned tickets could appease the masses. It's as much about emotion as money. And if the promoters had an "official" redistribution system, it would give the punters who missed out a second chance. I dunno Jono, maybe "the above system only bumps it from "very hard" to "extremely difficult". Alas! It is good to see a system introduced that links the purchaser with the ticket.
hairyson says...
One issue I often see is that all the tickets for an event go on sale at once, for all 'seating' options. So, on the day of release of tickets, there's a massive rush to the box office, people can't get through on the phone, or the web system freezes (and ticketb*stards et al don't help with their crap systems) reducing buyers to little puddles of frustration as they try again and again to get through. Would it reduce panic at the disco if punters knew that there would be say, 4 release batches across for example a week or so, with each batch a mix of ticket options?
MoRpH says...
This is excellent news for punters.
erinfellows says...
it does sound ike a sensible and it probably is the most logical suggestion but if security is checking the name and birthday of every person of the 40,000 people who walk through those gates, wont the lines be incredibly massive? i dont know about you, but that line at harbourlife 2004 was rubbish. i waited like an hour to get into the festival. does any one else see this as a problem?
Abbie Hamilton says...
Well i am one who missed out, and i am very angry at it. I was online just like everybody else since 9am on tuesday for field day tickets, and missed out. I am buying tickets for myself and 4 friends who are currently in iraq and have been there for the past 9 months. They will be home at christmas and they had their hearts set on going to field day to catch up with all their friends. I dont blame scalpers wholly, but they do have something to do with it. As much as it is only a small percentage, it is still a percentage of genuine customers that people miss out. I think that you underestimate the scalpers. As there is alot more out there than you say in your article. There are scalpers that will only sell face to face, so you wont see them on ebay, there are those that are waiting right up until the event itself to sell, because they know they can get an astronomical amount for it, and there are those that will only sell to people they know, and those that are on ebay at the moment. You have only counted ebay...... Perhaps Fuzzy, ticketek and ebay should get together, and for those people that are on ebay, need to submit to ebay the ticket numbers that they are selling, and then ticketek and fuzzy should just cancel those tickets, and re-issue the same amount of tickets just with different numbers at a 2nd release. However it wouldnt be wise to promote, that this is what is going to happen, as people wouldnt put the tickets on ebay up until after the 2nd release was done. OR.... the could have a box office outside the venue, with the amount of cancelled tickets right up until the event. AND where is the police out the front of the venue, stopping those that are selling them there?. This would at least give the 5% more of a chance.... Or fuzzy could cater for more people????
alchops says...
they haven't let you keep stubs in ages!
Spekman says...
i dont see why ppl dont organise to meet a scalper and then go to meet him with a bunch of mates, beat the crap out of him and take all his tickets...
qsnoop says...
I think these changes are great. However one of the major problems with buying tickets seems to be that often the suppliers website crashes or slows to a snails pace (harbourlife this year). Come on guys its not like you werent expecting huge demand in the first few minutes!
Lee Michaels says...
Why not mandate that tickets can't be resold? And for the few legitimate people that require a refund, it is done so with a penalty (so promoters cover administrative costs) or there is no penalty and the promoter re-sells at a premium. It's only a small ticket number versus the demand so a lotto system for the returned tickets could appease the masses. It's as much about emotion as money. And if the promoters had an "official" redistribution system, it would give the punters who missed out a second chance. I dunno Jono, maybe "the above system only bumps it from "very hard" to "extremely difficult". Alas! It is good to see a system introduced that links the purchaser with the ticket.
hairyson says...
One issue I often see is that all the tickets for an event go on sale at once, for all 'seating' options. So, on the day of release of tickets, there's a massive rush to the box office, people can't get through on the phone, or the web system freezes (and ticketb*stards et al don't help with their crap systems) reducing buyers to little puddles of frustration as they try again and again to get through. Would it reduce panic at the disco if punters knew that there would be say, 4 release batches across for example a week or so, with each batch a mix of ticket options?
MoRpH says...
This is excellent news for punters.
erinfellows says...
it does sound ike a sensible and it probably is the most logical suggestion but if security is checking the name and birthday of every person of the 40,000 people who walk through those gates, wont the lines be incredibly massive? i dont know about you, but that line at harbourlife 2004 was rubbish. i waited like an hour to get into the festival. does any one else see this as a problem?
Abbie Hamilton says...
Well i am one who missed out, and i am very angry at it. I was online just like everybody else since 9am on tuesday for field day tickets, and missed out. I am buying tickets for myself and 4 friends who are currently in iraq and have been there for the past 9 months. They will be home at christmas and they had their hearts set on going to field day to catch up with all their friends. I dont blame scalpers wholly, but they do have something to do with it. As much as it is only a small percentage, it is still a percentage of genuine customers that people miss out. I think that you underestimate the scalpers. As there is alot more out there than you say in your article. There are scalpers that will only sell face to face, so you wont see them on ebay, there are those that are waiting right up until the event itself to sell, because they know they can get an astronomical amount for it, and there are those that will only sell to people they know, and those that are on ebay at the moment. You have only counted ebay...... Perhaps Fuzzy, ticketek and ebay should get together, and for those people that are on ebay, need to submit to ebay the ticket numbers that they are selling, and then ticketek and fuzzy should just cancel those tickets, and re-issue the same amount of tickets just with different numbers at a 2nd release. However it wouldnt be wise to promote, that this is what is going to happen, as people wouldnt put the tickets on ebay up until after the 2nd release was done. OR.... the could have a box office outside the venue, with the amount of cancelled tickets right up until the event. AND where is the police out the front of the venue, stopping those that are selling them there?. This would at least give the 5% more of a chance.... Or fuzzy could cater for more people????
alchops says...
they haven't let you keep stubs in ages!
Spekman says...
i dont see why ppl dont organise to meet a scalper and then go to meet him with a bunch of mates, beat the crap out of him and take all his tickets...
FLUROBLOWS says...
Sounds good, but its a little late for me, I was soooo hoping to go to Harbourlife before i move overseas on the 26th of november for a year and HArbourlife was going to be my Big Send off. Is there going to be a second release or anything?
FLUROBLOWS says...
Sounds good, but its a little late for me, I was soooo hoping to go to Harbourlife before i move overseas on the 26th of november for a year and HArbourlife was going to be my Big Send off. Is there going to be a second release or anything?
marianakules says...
Well thank god something's being done, because me and about five girlfriends missed out on tickets this year and were there every year, so now of course we have to buy them off ebay or try to get them off someone else. I just think it's pretty lame that there selling for double the price and each person has like 5 to sell, because that was the limit.
Kerri Jones says...
Perhaps all festivals should be run over a few days.....I know in the UK a lot of festivals are 2 or 3 day festivals. The event organiser would make a shit load more money as they already have the venue in place, stages set, staffing etc therefore all ticket sales would just be bringing in more profit. Im sure if there was 2 days of Harbourlife they would sell out both days and more people would be able to go and enjoy themselves.....Field Day is a bit different....but 2 days of BDO in Sydney....2 days of Parklife etc....
DJ_LG says...
Bit slow aren't you? Sound Alliance already do this(name on ticket) for transmission and inthemix events. Catch up
Nicolette says...
I agree that scalping needs to be addressed, just in the past week i realised that i could not make it to harbourlife, So i rang moshtix. and asked if i could return the tickets in hoping that they could re-release them and i would pay a percentage cancel fee. Unfortunately they said this wasn't permitted and i would have to sell or give them away- i feel that if you allowed customers to refund tickets (for a fee) this may reduce resellling tickets.
Jammez says...
photoKat says...
Thankfully i got tickets this year and it will be my first Field Day, yey! however i know some guys who tried to sell a ticket last year on the day for about double ....but all they could get was approx the price they paid for it.
babbibelle says...
It's about time something's been done but seriously? walk in
ronotron says...
nice to see that there are attempts to stop the number of scalpers.... Although the math in this article isnt exactly accurate... Whilst the tix on ebay today may only represent just over 5 % they will be largely sold within the next few days, one guy is even offering up to twenty tix.... and then another batch of tickets will be released on ebay, perhaps another 5% of the total tix... its easy to see that over the next 2 and a bit months that there could be many thousand sold on ebay
austrance says...
well said The bottom line is these events are selling out quicker than ever because they're becoming more popular and mainstream, simple!
bobshled says...
I;m trying to understand what you said about "you can bring a few friends with you", does this mean that there is no 'set' capacity for an event as you can bring an indeterminant (I'm guessing max 3.) amount of people with you on the day? This sounds cool as much of my friends have difficulty determining whether they will be able to go to an event and jsut say no incase they can't make it.. This would mean they could just come if they want? Or do I have this completely wrong..
shua2k says...
While I hear the angst of a lot writers here, I don't really understand or have much compassion for people who miss out on tickets and then blame the scalpers. Yes, they take a small percentage of tickets away from genuine festival goers, and there are arguments for and against scalping. However, there are few events that sell out instantly, and if you are well prepared and know how to use the tickets systems, you should be able to get tickets on time. Some events sell out after a few weeks, and then people complain - they were available for so long, and then people wake up and buy them on ebay. Be prepared and be early and buy your ticket while you can! Secondly, people log on at 9:05am, instead of being ready at 9am, so those 5 minutes are critical. If you really want that ticket and can't bear buying it on ebay, then get to your computer earlier! And thirdly, waiting in line at an outlet is ridiclous for fast selling events, because by the time you get to front of the line, its probably too late. Better to go online (although if you don't have a credit card thats fair enough). This will help you next time from missing out. Good Luck!
Lee Michaels says...
FOR ALL THOSE UPSET AT MISSING OUT. I have heard of dummy bids on EBAY for $1million for a ticket (Summerdayze 2006). So if revenge is your motive....
Ken Knott says...
This is a positive and welcome initiative by Fuzzy I think that names should be printed on every festival ticket. To all those who say if you miss out you should get your tickets quicker, I disagree. On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I tried to buy a ticket from the BDO site. I entered my credit card details and clicked pay. The site timed out, I hit refresh and got an error saying that I was trying to buy too many tickets. I assumed that this meant that my transaction had been successful and I had got tickets. I didn't want to try again incase the system flagged me as trying to buy too many tickets and my original ones would be cancelled. I woke up in the morning checked my credit card statement and realised in fact that I had missed out. Even though I stayed up into the early hours trying to asccess the site. If this approach is going to be taken by promoters then the internet providers have to be capable of handling the massive volumes of traffic. Jonathan Wall: What are you going to do to improve the ticket sales systems from which the tickets are being purchased? PS If anyone wants to swap their BDO ticket for my FD ticket PM me.
jimihendrix says...
DJ MooseKnuckle says...
Are we going to have ID scanners as well??? why the hell not?
phillis says...
Fact: Festivals don't sell out in hours because of scalpers!! Fact: Festivals sell out because more people want to go to them I have missed out on Splendor and falls tickets this year, and yes I was pissed on missing out, but I didn't blame scalpers!! There were just people out there who were luckier than I was. Just because you have gone to a festival every year, it doenst give you more right than others to go to it, and thats something I just had to deal with!
macky says...
sound like a great system and i reckon itll work, i missed out on a tiket to field day myself and not willing to pay a scalper 4 one.
samwiseb says...
Nice work Fuzzy. Hopefully everyone else follows suit. It's really not that hard to implement a system like this.
hyeyeon says...
Good idea, I was deverstated that I missed out on field day. hopefully fuzzy will do a second release. and it made me more dissappointed when I heard afew friends of friends had managed to buy 10 tickets and were reselling them on ebay. I know alot of effort is put into these events by the organisers and it sux that scalpers are creating negative feelings round the event.
exceeder says...
they didn't take into account that 5% of tickets had gone on ebay just DAYS after they sold out. Add it all up at the end of the year and i'm sure there will be a lot more scalped tickets than they are letting on.
bwise says...
Sounds like the biggest load of shit ever. I can't be bothered printing out a fucking barcode. You said that ticket scalpers only take a small percentage of the tickets... so why implement this retarded system? Lucky Fuzzy Festivals are shit.
SneakySundaySlut says...
At first I blamed scalpers.. But after field day sold out so fast, I decided to blame the obvious: house/electro becoming pop culture and really the biggest thing around for australian youth. And that's just it! I guarantee the average age of a fuzzy event has dropped over the years from 23-25, to about 18-20. One only has to go to bondi beach over the school holidays to realise that 70% of the 15,000 odd crowd are actyally 15-17 (someone say undetected baby boom of 89/90s?). I remember my first fuzzy event, ranting on afterwards about how nice everyone was, everyone was just there for a good time - now I'm not so sure: too many try-hard derricks and girls wearing matching singlets (last time I checked that was a huge fashion faux pas), one could probably agree with me saying "where did all the lifesavers and tennis players go??". Ok I sound old and bitter: Im only 21 and Im not bitter, but I think to overcome the ticketing crisis (at least till the bandwagon kids find a new fad) we may have to look at a 21 and over only event. Of course this would not feature such 'big name' acts as Fedde le Grand - which is another obvious point: the dance community doesnt care about fedde, only video hits, mtv and highschool leavers do, which was the first sign of trouble when I saw his name appear in an event lineup (i think future). Anyways im ranting, im goin.
jimihendrix says...
I'm of the opinion that half of the people on this forum are fuzzy promoters creating fake aliases and posting on the forum. Fuzzy makes an absolute killing off these festivals only to pay some of the artists as little as $200 to play a show. I mean think about it how did they get this article on ITM in the first place. One other point to be made is that music at fuzzy parties is quite poor. Step out of Australia for a minute and put down your glow sticks down because there is some insane experimental electronic music coming out of festivals in europe that destroys the music at some of these festivals. Fluff is fluff and quality is quality.
skour says...
i don't really like the idea. i'm not a scalper myself but from my experience, the people that purchase the tickets off scalpers are usually die hard fans because they are the only ones who will pay that price. i'm not saying that die hard fans should pay more but i'd rather a fluro, teeny or shirtless gurner ban on events. these people barely know the music. i say a music test be in place, and a $50 premium for every piece of fluro clothing that a person wishes to wear to the event.
Geezah says...
I've said it before and I'll say it again, scalpers are scum, but I have intermittently kept an eye out on festivals in both Australia and abroad, and it does seem that these events, both rock and electronica, are selling out with ever increasing alacrity with each passing year. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is due to higher disposable incomes, a greater awareness of entertainments on offer, and a general sense of wanting to be part of a collective musical experience. I congratulate promoters such as Fuzzy, Lees
politik says...
John Wall has obviously never taken an Economics course. The only way to combat this issue, is to hold a dynamic auction for tickets. This way, demand is met at equilibrium, and most of the fans will get tickets (at the very least, they won't sell out in five minutes). Now, if the reason no promoter has EVER done this is because the price the market would set would be about ten times the original, then stop fucking blaming the scalpers and leave the tickets that would otherwise be unavailable for use to their own. See those prices on eBay? Those are MARKET-ADJUSTED prices. They're slightly higher because of constrained supply, but they're true prices and true indicators of the quality of the concert.
j3sse says...
ummm people. i think there are customers that are happy to pay the premium to get their tickets from scalpers. that is why the scalpers do it in the first place. the price that they will pay the scalpers is what they think is worth it, and what the scalper thinks it's worth too. simple. heck, BDO complains about scalpers... so what do they do? hold off 10,000 tickets to the sydney show for a ballot to sell for a higher price than the main release. that sounds exactly like scalping to me. i feel people have a right to buy up tickets and resell them at a premium. it's what happens with every other products in the world. why are festival tickets so special?
sonofmurchy says...
dont buy tickets from scalpers...there wont be a market for them anymore...no more scalping... sick of hearing people who whinge cause they weren't there is the first 25secs to get a ticket before a scalper, if people actually hated scalping so much then dont buy few tickets they sell and deal with missing out on the concert/festival...otherwise stop having a go at scalpers trying to make a quick buck and start blaming the people who buy from them at (sometimes) ridiculously inflated prices
adzieinthahouse says...
scaipers suck dam straight, decembeer and january in australia though are the best place on earth an events like big day out , feild day etc are just going to get bigger an always sell out if they where selling tix in july i'd buy regardless of the lineup , have u heard slow