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Stones fans shun overpriced touted tickets, while Mumford fans discover their resold tickets are fakes
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 26 November 2012
There was no shortage of tickets for The Rolling Stones’ first 50th anniversary show at the O2 Arena in East London last night, according to the Telegraph, providing you were willing to pay a hiked up rate.
The paper noted that just hours before doors were due to open yesterday for the first of a limited run of shows in London and New York to celebrate the band’s five decades in business, various secondary ticketing websites were still offering tickets for the concert.
Primary tickets for the Virgin Live-promoted event were already pretty pricey, starting at £106 including booking fees, and going up to £1140 for a premium package. During the show last night Mick Jagger joked about the pricing, asking, “How’s everyone in the cheap seats?”, before adding: “The problem is they’re not so cheap!”
And even less so if acquired via a resale site, where cheap seat tickets were on sale for several hundred pounds. Though many fans seemingly shunned those offers, leading to speculation there’d be some prolific touting outside the venue before the show last night, as touts tried one last time to recoup on the primary tickets they snapped up when they first went on sale, originally believing that, with so few gigs, Stones fans would pay anything to ensure access into the Dome.
The Telegraph quoted a spokesman for the band as saying: “It’s a real shame that fans have been prevented from buying tickets at the original price and that secondary marketing agencies are attempting to profit. The band does not participate in anything of this nature”.
While Stones fans were seemingly unwilling to pay out for overpriced tickets on the secondary market, about 100 Mumford & Sons fans did pay hiked up prices to access a gig in Portsmouth last week, only to discover the tickets they’d bought were fakes.
The BBC reports that about 100 people were refused entry to Portsmouth’s Guildhall to see the band because their tickets weren’t the real deal, with one affected fan saying she’d paid £200 for her two tickets. Many of the fake tickets seem to have been sold on Viagogo, though Seatwave may have been used too.
The former has said it holds on to monies paid to touts until after the gig, so will be able to provide refunds to those affected, and is also planning to offer disappointed fans free tickets to another Mumfords show or vouchers. Seatwave also said it would provide refunds to any fans who acquired fake tickets via its service. Both will also likely assist the police in any investigation into the people selling the fake tickets.
Meanwhile the band themselves said on their Facebook: “We sincerely hope that not too many of you good honest Mumford & Sons fans have been affected. If you have purchased tickets from any secondary vendors then we would urge you to seek your money back immediately. Remember to always purchase tickets from official vendors only”.
