Arcade Fire tell fans not to buy gig tickets from eBay

woo!

go arcade fire :)

I'm all for it in principle, but email addresses surely are tied up in Ticketmaster, seetickets etc etc, and will not be released due to data protection. Added to the fact that ebay doesn't see ticket toutting as breaking its rules, and they certainly won't release email addresses.

I reckon photo id (passport/drivers license) can be used on the door. The venues are small enough to do this, and a "plus 1" will be allowed for those people who bought two tickets

the more ebay gets. I've heard a rumor that ticketmaster are going to have a completly different system by the end of 2007

i can't see any way they could implement this idea effectively, given the current laws, and eBay's (previously stated) stance on people using it as a platform for selling tickets.

They're businessmen.

because people aren't going to buy tickets off ebay now and risk having them cancelled

Rants like that always make me laugh. There's three very good reasons why Ebay allows tickets to be resold through their website...

1. We live in a capitalist society where money = reward. You may not like it... but without the almighty dollar there'd be no big business, and without big business we'd all be living in mud huts eating leaves & dieing in our mid-30s. Everything in the world has a market value and when people start artificially lowering the value of goods (i.e. by charging just £20 for these tickets) & also restricting their supply, that is called COMMUNISM. And it doesn't work.

2. People love blaming the touts for concerts selling out - but these types of gigs that argument simply doesn't make sense. These shows sold out in 2minutes... if none of the touts had snapped up tickets then the gigs would probably have taken THREE minutes to sell out. Hardly a big difference - and who would you guys rant & rave about then? Your fellow fans? Big bands have a right to play in small venues - and hardcore fans have a right to prove their dedication in monetary terms. Otherwise its just pot-luck as regards who managed to fill out the credit card form in time.

3. It's simple economics... if supply goes up, prices come down. When Razorlight played at the Barfly earlier this year, & when Noel Gallagher played Union Chapel, there were so few tickets up for sale on Ebay that there market value shot up to FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS A PAIR. That's insane! Surely it's better to allocate a small percentage of tickets to reputable ticket resllers, thereby ensuring the prices are kept reasonable. Trust me if 50 tickets had been put aside for Ebay then none of you guys would have to pay £100 per ticket.

I think Aracade Fire are being sincere but to be honest they're being douches - just like Kylie was. If I was Arcade Fire my statement would have read "Please only buy tickets from Ebay if the seller has selected to donate at least 20% of the final price to charity" (you can do this when you sell an item - Ebay makes the donation automatically on the seller's behalf so he/she never even sees the money, and the buyer KNOWS his money has gone to a good cause).

Anyone agree? Or am I about to be lynched?

The Kaisers & arctic monkeys are playing there in 2007.

yiiiikes.

You'd like an arcade fire ticket, but you can't afford to pay the market price

I'd like a mansion in knightsbridge, but I can't afford to pay the market value

...

you whine about it - I don't

If toutting was stopped, then I believe 99% of the rants would stop. If I knew that I had tried to get tickets and failed, but know that another fan had got hold of them instead, then fair enough. I'd feel alot better knowing that another real fan had got hold of them rather than a money grabbing c**t who bought them specifically to flog them onwards on ebay at huge profit.

I agree with you, especially the bit about charity. There've been times when I've ended up with tickets to "high value" shows that I can't use - on occasion, you can find someone you know well enough to trust they won't go on and sell it for profit, and that's great. But often that just isn't possible, and doing the "good thing" and putting it on eBay at face value just gives a tout chance to snap up another slab of profit by buying it from you. I've set up listings in the past that have been Buy It Now at apparent market value, then added a charity contribution to cancel out the profit. I think that ethically, this is flawless - it achieves the best allocation of resources. In fact you could probably make a very strong argument for buying up bulk loads of tickets exclusively for such a sales process.

All that said, I have a degree in microeconomics, so it's pretty natural for me to side with the supply/demand market rather than the poor consumers with low reservation prices.

whether for sporting or musical events I have sold them on to a friend, or a friend of a friend, for face value. Except for once; when i sold the tickets to someone else i'd met on a fan-forum for face value.

Why should i profiteer from a shared passion? Common Cause, Music Community...

how about just adding people's names and require ID (as in what they did at Glasto). Then if you really need to change the name or cancel the ticket just have a way of refunding the money onto the card and being allowed to offer the ticket to someone else with a priority system (i.e. the original buyer can suggest a different person who may want the ticket)

www.scarletmist.co.uk

Great site, and also works a treat getting rid of spare tickets at face value

i had a feeling theyd offer more dates and tickets

i don't mean the actual process of rendering a ticket invalid.

what i meant was:

how do you know whose tickets to cancel? unless ebay provide the ticket vendors with the seller's details (which they have categorically stated they WON'T) then there's no surefire way of linking the ticket purchase to the ebay auction.

sure, the vendors could employ people to create eBay user IDs and message the sellers and hope they're stupid enough not to hide their email addresses when they reply, but that idea is totally unrealistic. anyone who plans to sell tickets on won't give the ticket vendors the same email address as their ebay account, and there's no way ticketmaster etc will fork out for all that.

why five shows in london?