The organisers of Splendour In The Grass made headlines last week when they publicly condemned professional scalpers selling tickets to sideshows for the annual Byron Bay event at exorbitant prices on ticket resale sites.
Tickets for performances including At The Drive-In’s first Australian shows since 2001 swiftly sold out and it wasn’t long before they showed up on resale sites for up to three times the original price of the ticket.
In response, promoters issued a statement urging punters to steer clear of resale websites: “Please do not purchase your tickets to our shows through any unauthorised sellers (Ticketmaster RESALE, ViaGoGo, Ebay, Gumtree & The Ticket Merchant).”
Now, Australian tour promotions giant Frontier Touring have echoed the sentiments of Splendour organisers, taking to Facebook to vent their frustrations over “ticket scalping and the presence of unauthorised resellers”.
“Recently we’ve been made aware of people paying excessively inflated prices for tickets to our concerts through unauthorised outlets – some of these tickets being sold multiple times, which has led to fans being turned away at the venue,” they wrote.
“We have seen unauthorised tickets on sale for Vance Joy’s sold out Australian tour and the Troye Sivan Australia and New Zealand tour being made available via theticketmerchant.com.au. We are particularly concerned with the inflated prices of these tickets from unauthorised sellers.”
“We really cannot stress this enough – fans buying tickets to shows presented by Frontier Touring are warned not to buy tickets from unauthorised operators. Our only advice is: simply don’t do it.”
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Frontier go on to state that they do not allocate tickets to online ticket resale merchants such as Viagogo and online retail spaces like eBay, explaining that such services can be taken advantage of by professional scalpers.
Responding to a commenter, the touring giant insisted they have no issue with punters reselling tickets. The issue, they argue, arises when unscrupulous scalpers use the services to resell tickets at inflated prices to reap a profit.
“We have no issue with people selling tickets at the same value they purchased them for,” they wrote. “But majority of the time the tickets you see on these sites are professional scalpers seeking to profit from the passion of fans.”
