News from the wacky world of secondary ticketing now. And first up Seatwave has announced a partnership with Grand Union Management which will see the artist management company officially recognise the ticket resale service, and encourage fans of the artists it represents to use their ticket resale platform if they want to get their hands on tickets for sold out shows.
I think Grand Union will get a bit of a kick back from tickets resold via Seatwave (though I am inferring that from their statement on the matter), while the management firm will ensure that any tickets resold via Seatwave will be honoured. The partnership comes amid all that chatter about the growth of online ticket touting, with many concert promoters and artist managers pissed off that fully fledged companies are now profiting from dodgy touts (ie the companies that run the ticket auction sites, all of whom charge a commission).
Grand Union's David Bianchi told reporters: "The secondary ticketing market is as old as the ticket market itself and up until now has had no accountability. The ability for our clients to earn fairly from the secondary market represents not only another income stream, but hopefully the beginning of the end of our artists' fans being ripped off outside shows".
Seatwave top man Joe Cohen added: ""This partnership marks the first step in our approach to helping to resolve the challenges that face our industry".
PS: I now know for certain Grand Union's artists will get a cut of any ticket resales via Seatwave, because the Resale Rights Society, that artist-management-led body pushing for such deals, has just said so. RSS man Marc Marot says this: "This is a welcome first step. Barely six months ago Seatwave CEO Joe Cohen said artists asking for a share of secondary ticketing revenue were 'a bunch of pigs at the trough'. This is a welcome change of heart that shows that RRS lobbying is having an impact. We now urge Seatwave to recompense all of the artists whose tickets it re-sells. They could of course do individual deals with the hundreds of artists on their site, but it would probably be more efficient simply to talk to the RRS".