Carl Barat and how the Libertines are against ticket reselling
Posted on August 25th, 2010
Unlucky fans hoping to snap up Libertines tickets will have been greeted with an email from Carl Barat this morning inviting them to buy tickets to his latest tour. The mailout included a personalised message from the man himself. The interesting part of this was: ‘Big sorry again to all of you who applied for tickets but didn’t make it through the ballot, we put the system in place to try to rule out secondary ticketing and to try to ensure that it all fans paid the same price for a ticket.’ Barat is one of the few artists to voice his opinion on ticket reselling. Artists (well their management and promotion teams) sell tickets at a certain price to make them accessible to fans. For those of you who didn’t apply for Libertines tickets, a bit of history. In 2004 the Libertines disbanded leaving thousands of fans unhappy. They announced their comeback in March this year when they confirmed their performance at Leeds and Reading festival.To be able to buy two tickets to the their festival warm-up gig at the HMV Forum in Kentish Town later this week you had to sign up via their website. This then automatically entered you into a ballot. ‘Winners’ were then selected from the ballot to have the chance to buy tickets. Both successful and unsuccessful applicants were notified and then later in the week more people were given the chance to buy tickets. It seems like a fair system to me.
While the ballot scheme doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of ticket reselling it definitely narrows the chance of it happening. This gives fans the chance to buy tickets and for everyone to pay the same price.
Interestingly after a quick internet search I can only find a handful of tickets onsale. None of the three biggest reselling websites have any and on Ebay (where your purchase isn’t guaranteed, unlike on a reselling website) there are only two tickets up for grabs.
Secondary ticket reselling websites (like Viagogo, Seatwave and Getmein) are legal. So why do I mention it?
Ticket reselling is a contentious issue at This is Money. On one hand, it’s legal and a good way for entrepreneurial individuals to make some extra cash from buying up tickets and flogging them on secondary ticket reselling websites. Your ticket authenticity is guaranteed and they sometimes provide a way to get a ticket at a cheaper price. Just as our News Editor, Ed Monk resold tickets earlier this year.
From my perspective, they rob some fans from the chance of seeing their favourite band, comedy act or show. Some of the websites charge up to 25% commission for reselling a ticket. And one of those sites (Getmein) is owned by Ticketmaster. So essentially they are reselling a ticket they’ve already sold once. Just as I blogged in March earlier this year when I tried to get my hands on tickets to Flight of the Conchordes.
I’d love to give Mr Barat a call to chat about this…but something tells me that he’ll be quite busy at the moment. Ticket reselling is something I’ve investigated at great length and I’m hoping to put questions to each of the ticket reselling websites (like our Assistant Editor Simon Lambert did in November 2008).
I’d like to know what you think, before putting some questions to the ticket reselling websites. Please vote in our ticket reselling fairness poll and let us know what you think in the comment box below.
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Tags: Carl Barat, Libertines Ticket, Ticket
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