There's an interesting story in Music Week this week regarding the wacky world of secondary ticketing which reveals that one of the charities that benefited from the Concert For Diana event staged to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana's death earlier this year used a secondary ticketing site to sell off their allotment of complimentary guest tickets in order to maximise the money the charity made from the project.
The unnamed charity secretly resold its tickets via online ticket agency Get Me In! The move was potentially controversial because the UK live industry has been increasingly proactive in its opposition to the resale of tickets at marked up prices via so called secondary ticket websites, or auction sites like eBay. Promoters of the Concert For Diana themselves made moves to stop the resale of tickets by members of the public for the benefit concert.
The boss of Get Me In!, Andrew Blachman, has told Music Week his company originally refused to resell tickets for the event because it was in aid of charity, but that they changed their position when they were approached by one of the charities benefiting. Blachman: "Since the event itself, or a charity affiliated with it, was not willing to work with us, we blocked sellers from listing for the event. Then, one of the charities involved in the Diana event came to us and asked to sell tickets on our site. They came to us anonymously because they were concerned about the promoters finding out".
The news comes ahead of a government review on the growth of secondary ticket sales, which is expected to not recommend outlawing such sales, but to propose restrictions that would mean secondary tickets sites could not resell tickets to certain major events, most likely events in aid of charity. Music Week now speculates as to whether the fact one of the beneficiary charities of a major event of this kind collaborated with a secondary ticket seller may affect the case for introducing such restrictions.