Technology and the touts

Promoters and musicians want to stop the touts, and technology could have the answer. We spoke to the CEO of eTickets, a large online ticketing firm, to find out more.

Gig-goers in the UK know the familiar sound as you approach a venue: “Tickets. Buy or Sell.”

In fact, NME magazine is committed to the effort with their campaign called Stamp Out The Touts. Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party and the Sugababes’ Heidi Range are onboard. Last year, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand told NME readers to “smack a tout in the face.”

Stopping touts would be a welcome move if someone could do it. We spoke to Matt McNeill, the CEO of eTickets, to see what his company offers online and through mobile technology to help combat them.

eTickets has a novel way of conducting ticket sales online. They have set up the technology so that the promoters can choose how stringent they would like to be. McNeill says: “We allow individual event promoters to decide their own policy with regard to ticket transfers. Most are fine with innocent resellers transferring the odd ticket when they genuinely can’t attend an event; it’s the large scale touts which cause the problem.”

What the internet can do

With the internet you find the problem and the solution.

eBay has revolutionised a new breed – the bedroom tout. They can not only sell a ticket to an event they cannot go to, but make some fast money too. Not only do the promoters want to see the back of the bedroom touts, but customers do too as they don’t want to pay exorbitant prices to see their favourite band when all other tickets have sold out. The problem, however, is a big one with some bands selling out within minutes.

According to the Guardian, promoters estimate that a third of tickets are resold. For a Take That concert, for example, 300,000 tickets were bought within seconds with 100,000 back for sale later, online, by a secondary seller.

Even the government is mucking in for the fight with it legislation under the 2006 Act, section 166 amendments making it illegal to resell tickets for a profit. However, according to the NME, 84 per cent of their gig-goers support the right to resell.

McNeill suggests that the internet can also provide the solution: “Through eTicketing all event tickets can be issued to named individuals. We issue a ticket by email which contains the guest name and a security code, a simple ID check on entry to the event then makes unauthorised resale of a ticket impossible.

“How stringently this is applied is up to the event promoter – for example, it’s possible to allow ticket transfers or amendments within a limited period of time.”

Mobile phones used for etix

Festivals such as Live8’s texting competition for tickets, the O2 Wireless Festival and Bloodstock 2007 have issued their tickets as text messages as a paperless approach to beating the tout. 

Mobile ticketing is a relatively new method in selling tout-proof tickets. After paying for tickets online, punters specify their mobile number and tickets will be sent straight as a text message.

"Mobile ticketing offers some great opportunities for taking this even further but it’s still some time away from mass adoption I think, as a number of ease-of-use issues for consumers need to be ironed out first"

There is no extra text charge for gig-goers using the service and fans only need to pay the price of the ticket advertised. In fact, it could be cheaper as the promoters have cut out the middleman and are using paperless tickets.

Mobile ticketing, then, seems to be the way of the future. But McNeill says the technology is too young to know how effective it is. “Mobile ticketing offers some great opportunities for taking this even further but it’s still some time away from mass adoption I think, as a number of ease-of-use issues for consumers need to be ironed out first,” he said.

Attempts at beating the touts

Glastonbury Festival made the headlines this year with its tight security preventing fraudulent ticket claims; in fact, they went so far as to contact punters to tell them their tickets have been cancelled if they tried to sell it on.

People attending the UK’s largest festival had to pre-register their details and provide a passport-style photograph which was printed onto the tickets. Stepping up security this year was designed specifically to beat the touts and to not exploit the desperate trying to go to the event. Over 130,000 tickets for the three-day festival were sold in less than two hours once they went on sale in April.

Yet if any tickets were sold on eBay, for instance, the vendor would be tracked through the identification supplied upon purchasing. This led to some people who innocently could not make the festival losing money. According to The Guardian, some even received threatening phone calls: “If they refund my money then I would take it off eBay, but they won't do that," a fan told the newspaper.

Technology still holds the answer

Glastonbury, despite questionable methods, may just have foiled the touts this time. The facility for capturing ID seems to be the key, as McNeill explains: “eTicketing through email allows us to easily issue tickets linked to an individuals ID, and having the capability to change and reissue tickets electronically makes secure ticketing much simpler than older paper based methods. For example, if a ticket is reported stolen we can instantly block it to prevent it being used at an event,” he says.

As O2 and Live8 pioneered the use of mobile ticketing as a way to beat touts reselling tickets, this technology could be part of a winning formula as well.  Another aspect to this is that for all its authentication procedures, it is totally accessible as most people are familiar with the ways of the mobile phone.

McNeill commented on what technology brings to both the merchant and the consumer: “The advantages of speed, efficiency and security of delivery are so great compared to traditional methods that it’s very hard to find any major problems.

“Consumers are used to purchasing online and now that even airline tickets are electronic the process is familiar to just about everyone.”

It seems that the internet, for all the problems it has brought to the music industry, can also bring some answers too.

Visit http://www.etickets.to/

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