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that most of this board didn't know or strongly suspect already happens. It's a joke, but nothing's going to change until either parliament decides to legislate or consumers stop being stupid and buying from touts at inflated prices.

They were outside the Astoria most nights covering the pavement around to the tube station. This meant selling on a spare ticket to another fan was almost impossible without one of them stepping in. Not a nice bunch of guys...there was definitely a hierarchy with the less weasel faced members organising with mobile phones and supplying the others with tickets.

Outside the Calixico/Yo La Tengo at Somerset House years ago I saw an American who didn't seem to understand how it worked being pushed to the floor and then kicked. Just for daring to question why he couldn't resell his ticket not through them.

Another time at a Sterolab gig (of all bands...) in Kilburn someone I knew was punched and then threatened with a stabbing for trying to sell on a ticket.

I was always amazed that no one really every picked up on the tout gangs - The Evening Standard or one of the other London papers. Sean is right that people are scared to step in and say something because they are/were at every gig.

I do pretty much the only thing I can do, which is to avoid any dealings with them whatsoever - even if that means not getting a few quid off them for a ticket I won't otherwise get to shift or whatever.

Never come across or heard stories of anyone acting like that in Manchester or Newcastle, and I've sold face value tickets to fans at numerous gigs.

and they are all bad.

The first ones, as Sean highlights, are the ones who are outside venues and are just scum. My only real horror story with them is that, as a naive 19 year old, I found our group had a spare for a Red Hot Chili Peppers (I know, I know) gig at the Astoria in 1990. I saw someone outside who was looking for a ticket, approached them, agreed with them paying me the face value of the ticket, took it out of my pocket and a tout came along and nabbed it out of my hand saying 'that's mine now - f*** off'. I got into a fight with him and three other touts and had to be rescued quickly by my mates.....

Fortunately, these type of touts are around less and less these days, though they obviously still exist. That's because they get few tickets directly from promoters now, as promoters supply the secondary online sites. They mainly do premiership football games now instead as they earn more money.

The second type is the secondary ticket sites like viagogo. They usually get their tickets straight from the promoters as Sean's post highlights. Promoters do this for many shows as a way of earning more money; without defending promoters, they sometimes do this because the fee charged by the band can be so high that promoters are left with less than 10% of the gross and are a money making business, so......
I've got loads of examples (and I'm sure DiS'ers have as well) of where you log on at 9am to try and buy tickets for a gig, keep refreshing, don't get through, within 5 minutes it's sold and yet you get an email later that day from viagogo or seatwave or whoever advertising tickets for the gig that has now sold out.........very frustrating.

The third type is the 'person at home' tout who buys tickets and sells on eBay. These are opportunists who just cash-in, have no regard for the artist or purchaser and are just looking to make a quick buck, not unlike like the other two examples, but are almost completely anonymous.

Hard to say if the problem will ever go away as there will be always be gigs where the demand will outstrip the supply. It's illegal to tout (or 'scalp') in New York City, but you can still buy tickets out there online and there can be touts out on the street, but they are very discreet and polite, I used them once when I found out we were in NYC and Interpol & Secret Machines were playing at Hammerstein Ballroom a few years ago. But the authorities seem to have greatly eradicated the problem.

Anything that can be done over here will be greatly appreciated I reckon.........

and this tout kept pestering me to sell him my tickets which i really didn't want to do. Eventually he said he had a couple of buyers and for some reason walked me over to them. I don't know if he was expecting me to sell the tickets to him and then he would sell them on at a profit.

Anyway I sold them direct to the couple for face value and the tout just started screaming a torrent of abuse at me. Hie eyes were popping out of his head and he just kept calling me a see you next Tuesday. I got off lightly by the sounds of things!

Now this isn't an endorsement of touting but what I don't understand is that if you're a tout and you consider what you do to be a legitimate business practice (market forces, supply and demand, blah, blah, blah) then good luck to you. Be professional, make your money and accept that most of the time you'll come out on top but on occasion you will get screwed over. That's the nature of the beast.

If you resort to intimidation, verbal abuse and even violence then you're just showing yourself up to be exactly what the rest of us know, a vicious little criminal.

was for Cut Copy at Manchester Club Academy last March. It sold out before my mate and I realised it was on, so we turned up on the day. The touts were after £40, we got him down to £30 for tickets that were £12 face value :(
Top gig, though

I once thought i was selling a ticket to a tout, but in fact it turned out to be fan.

on approaching a shack gig at the ica a few years back, with my spare ticket (a mate dropped out on the day), a chap was hanging around asking for any spares, looking fairly tout-like. so i said i had one, he asked how much, i said £25 (face was about £20) expecting him to talk me down, but he said, "i'll give you £30", whipped out the cash, i gave him the ticket and he walked straight into the gig. If i'd have known he was actually going to the gig and not a tout i would've given it to him for face.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is.

but as I have an easily googlable username and it's mostly conjecture, I'll probably give it a miss. Suffice it to say, there are almost certainly some underhand stuff going on, not just at promoter level. Wish I could say more really but as I say, it's mostly conjecture anyway.

I was only just 16, and very small. Was trying to get rid of a spare (seating) ticket. Tout offered me £5 for it at the station. I laughed and carried on to the venue. Another tout there offered me £5 for it telling me NAABAADY WANTS TA SIT DAAWN MAAYTE! I told him I'd just been offered £10 for it at the venue from another tout, so I'd take £10. He laughed at me and said DAAN'T FINK YA DID MAAAYTE!

So I saw these regular gig going dudes hanging about and went to speak to them, agreed to sell it to one of them for face value, £15. Suddenly get grabbed from behind by a mean looking motherfucker who spins me round and starts shouting in my face. Luckily (?) his boss or whatever was nearby and came over and defused the situation. Offered me £10 and told me to TAKE IT AND GO AND ENJOY THE GIG OR THERE WILL BE TROUBLE. Actually think I would have been smacked one by his smackhead minion if he hadn't have stepped in. MY HERO, LOL

saw one once almoast attack a 15 year old guy outside a Jimmy Eat World show for trying to sell a ticket to a fan at face value. venue security chased him off, and he came back with a bunch of his vile tout mates. PRETTY TENSE.

Would the touts push about a hairy biker in a leather jacket at an Iron Maiden gig? Or argue with a group of lads outside an Oasis gig?

Most touts are scum, the kind of people you would cross the other side of the road to avoid. You wouldn't want to drink in their pubs. They will intimidate and bully. For them, an indie gig crowd of mainly students in their late teens to early 20s is an easy target. I saw the same touts again and again in the '90s - outside The Astoria, Hammersmith, The Forum and Brixton. I went to school with one of them and he was a nasty piece of work then.

Saying that, I did have a pleasant experience with two touts at the Laura Marling gig in Westminster Hall recently. I told them that I would pay no more than face value. They just laughed and told me that they should have been at the Royal Albert Hall for George Michael, but it had been cancelled that day due to illness. They offered me a ticket at £40, I declined and decide to wait and see. Eventually they sold their last tickets to some young Japanese or Korean ladies and I was about to go home when they came to me (and another girl hanging around for a single ticket) and told us we could get in for £20 each. They had found a guy and his girlfriend who had two spares as their friends had pulled out. The touts did not ask for any money from this guy. After the match-making, they wished us a good concert and went their way.

A couple of freinds went without tickets and was offered 2 for £90, they misheard it as £19 each much to the amusement of aforementioned scumbag 'Nah mate ninety, 9 T'. Upon him turning to bother someone else one of the boys noticed he dropped something stood on it until he was out of sight, then bought two tickets off him most of which was paid for from the cash he had dropped.

Enough said.

real music fans can sell tickets on at huge profits outside venues whilst cutting out the voilent, druggy touts.

A band I wanted to see had tickets on sale across all agencies at 9AM for some Brixton shows and Ticketweb showed they'd completely sold out 3 minutes later, so no dice.

However, Ticketweb's 'resale' site had numerous tickets on offer for the same shows at over twice the price up for sale at 9.04.
Considering it takes at least 6 minutes to upload 'resale' tickets to this site as a member of the public, this was pretty odd.

I can only assume in this case that there were some extremely fast typers who were assured they had tickets to resell at 9.00, or the tickets were ported over from the main site to sell as 'resale' and make more profit.

I asked for an explanation as I'd kept screen shots, but was totally ignored to how this could have happened by their customer service.

A similar thing happened and was caught out in the US over Springsteen tickets where punters were actually ported over to the resale sites automatically when the shows had '''sold out'''.
http://www.ticketnews.com/news/Bruce-Springsteen-fans-to-receive-refunds-as-FTC-settles-ticketing-case-with-Ticketmaster2101871

Bear also in mind that this sort of practice has made normal ticket prices skyrocket over the last few years as people are still willing to pay crazy prices, It's a real shame for the passionate gig goer that they're exploited like this.

Got ripped off with a fake ticket once. For Bowie at the Astoria. Worst thing was, other people were buying from touts and got real tickets.

Got into the Spiritualized RAH gig (the live album one) for under face value, though.

One thing I saw that pissed me off was a fan trying to re-sell a ticket at a Wilco gig. Security kept moving him away from the queue, but they were ignoring all the touts who were buying and selling. (One tried to buy off this guy, he told him "I'd rather eat it").

Only solution: don't pay above face value, no matter what. If you're buying from another fan, pay them face value. Even if the gig isn't sold out. If we treat each other right, we can limit the power of the touts.

And was threatened by a couple of the touts. I went up to some people asking if they wanted a spare ticket and said I would give it to them for face value. Only for someone to come up to me swearing and telling me not to try anything like that again, or else!

I remember trying to get a ticket for Muse at Cardiff in 2006 and at the time being unaware of touts. For hours I was trying to get one with several telling me to stick with them and they would get me a ticket when their "mates come back from wherever". As the doors opened I went up one and he wanted me to pay £150! So went into the Box Office and managed to buy one for £25!

Also, I think I know what Andyvine is alluding to, and I've heard similar...conjectures.

I worked for four years in Mickettaster's customer support department. Mickettaster also run a secondary marketplace style site, Git Me In. It is run under the premise that, as Mickettaster operate a no exchange/refund policy, if you can no longer attend an event you can sell your tickets on Git Me In. Git Me In is staffed by Mickettaster staff who have moved over from the call centre. Its office space is a corner of the Mickettaster office. Although Mickettaster staff are trained, when asked, to say that they can't give any info about Git Me In, that they are run by the same company but are not the same company, you can see the Git Me In staff from the Mickettaster customer support department.

During monthly briefings, we would discuss sales and traffic, particularly over busy onsales. They would also mention that Git Me In's traffic went up massively during busy periods, which is understandable as people will try any sites when looking for tickets. However, they would also tell us that sales went up for Git Me In during these busy onsales, especially for the act who were onsale. Now, as Git Me In is ostensibly a third party marketplace, that is to say it is advertised as being for fans to sell to other fans (in much the same way as Viagogo and Seatwave which were covered by Dispatches last night) but with the added security of the fact that it's run by Mickettaster. The only way that they could have these tickets available during the onsale is if Mickettaster or the promoters (most often Nive Lation, who have recently merged with Mickettaster despite a lot of concern from the Competition Commission that it would squash potential competitors as Mickkettaster before the merger was the largest ticketing company in the world) had specifically assigned tickets to Git Me In. This is the only way this could happen as for a customer to have purchased a ticket through an official channel and then list it on Git Me In, they would not be available immediately and besides, the original point of Git Me In was for people who are unable to attend an event. Clearly people who are reselling their tickets on the same day as the onsale have bought specifically to resell them.

Obviously, Viagogo and Seatwave staff allegedly using multiple credit cards to purchase tickets fromm official sellers and then reselling them is massively immoral but probably not illegal. The promoters giving them an allocation of tickets means they should be advertising the fact that some tickets are from the promoters and obviously they should be sold at face value but they glossed over that in the programme by saying that if they are advertised as being sold by a third party then that can also be the promoter. I wasn't convinced by that to be honest but from the way it was worded I'm sure they'd saught legal advise to make sure they weren't going against the Sales of Goods Act or whatever. The point is that Git Me In is apparently being run by Mickettaster as a means of fighting against touting by allowing legitimate customers who are unable to get a refund due to Mickettaster's own terms and conditions. If Mickettaster are selling tickets at a marked up price through Git Me In without even selling them through Mickettaster first, I would argue that this is far shadier than anything touched upon by Dispatches, especially in light of the Nive Lation merger.

I should of course say that I don't have any evidence other than what I came across in four years experience of working there. If you're not convinced that I did, I'm sure not many other people would know that the office is around the corner from the Frog and Bucket in the Northern Quarter in Manchester and across the road and down a back street from the staff entrance is a Chinese herbal medicine place.

one tout related story.

After a Manics gig a few years ago a tout was selling his crap knock off t-shirts and was about to make a sale. I was a bit drunk and said to the guy buying it "Don't buy this shit, it'll disintegrate as soon as you wash it". Safe to say the tout wasn't too pleased.

Cunts the lot of them.

My mate came along on the off chance he could find a ticket. As it turned out, the gig was massively undersold, and he bought one off a very glum looking tout for about half the price we'd paid for ours.

and both companies come across as total scum. Touts in general are scum.

Bit surreal for there to be a viagogo advert at the top of this page though...

and going to Brixton Academy for the first time.

In facy, they're still scary now. All of them look like they'd knife you. Saying that, anyone silly enough to buy a rip off t-shirt outside a gig and expect it to last is kinda deluding themselves.

To be honest, I hate the scummy bastards.

people collectively stop buying. Every seller needs a buyer and the only way to stop resellers is to make sure there is no market. If everyone accepted that once a gig was sold out, that was it and didn't attempt to buy tickets from elsewhere touts and secondary ticket agencies would soon go bust. That of course is in an ideal world, which of course doesn't exist :(