I'm getting a bit bored about all this whining about the secondary ticket market, but whatever, Harvey Goldsmith has again been ranting on the topic, this time at In The City.
As much previously reported, Goldsmith is one of the most vocal critics of the growth of online ticket touting, and recently vowed to ensure any tickets for his Led Zeppelin reunion concert sold via eBay would be cancelled. Giving a keynote at In The City, he said he fear the growth of the secondary ticketing market, where touts unrelated to a concert profit by reselling tickets, could have a negative impact on the currently thriving live sector.
According to Billboard, he said: "eBay are the biggest tickets touts in the world currently, and underneath them is another group of horrible parasites called the secondary market, who go under this banner of being professional and helping the industry, and all they're doing is fucking the industry. We in the live industry are suddenly allowing all of these parasites to take over ... The truth is we don't need them. We never really needed them, but we let them come in and take over and it's big problem. It's something that's going to bubble up to the surface and if we don't get on top of it, it will take us over, and it will kill the industry".