This week’s NME magazine came out offering some rather shocking figures on the current boom of UK scalpers, which they inexplicably refer to as ‘touts’ – they also call trucks ‘lorries’, kooky Brits! – with the music sheet claiming that some ticket hawkers are pulling in profits of almost £28,000 ($50,000 AUD) a year.

According to the news piece, a recent investigation into web-based ticket sclaping by security group G4S revealed that your average scalper is drawing at least a 59% profit on each individual ticket sold, whilst those making the big, 50K a year earnings are trading off at least 10 ticket scalps a week.

Pointing to an example of the current scalping crisis facing UK promoters, the study outlined that tickets for this year’s Reading festival, featuring the likes of LCD Soundsystem, Pendulum, Rusko and Roots Manuva, were being scalped online at present with a 32% mark-up tacked on by the touts.

Although Australian event promoters have done their best to implement new methods to curb scalpers’ profiteering tricks, the problem seems to show no sign of going away. We have to wonder if it’s time for the music industry to forget the downloaders and go after the ticket scalpers?