Pre-sale tickets for The Cure — UK indie legends and one of the biggest draws on the Splendour In The Grass 2016 lineup — went on sale this morning. But according to fans of the iconic group, the tickets were being listed on resale sites hours before the pre-sale launched.
The Cure announced a run of Splendour sideshows last week, causing frenzy amongst fans, many of whom were looking to take advantage of the Telstra Thanks pre-sale, which went live at 10am this morning. Gold seating and General Admission tickets ran $139.90 plus booking fee.
But Facebook user Sara Carroll noticed something strange just before 8am this morning. When she searched for The Cure on Ticketmaster Resale, the ticketing giant’s controversial resale facility, there were numerous listings for Cure tickets at double the price.
Ticket resale sites have been copping a lot of flak lately, including from the promoters of Splendour In The Grass and Aussie concert giant Frontier Touring, with both warning consumers to stay away from such sites as they can be untrustworthy and easily exploited by scalpers.
“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,” the touring monolith wrote in a statement over the weekend.
After sideshow tickets appeared on resale sites at inflated prices, Splendour promoter Secret Sounds told fans, “Please do not purchase your tickets to our shows through any unauthorised sellers (Ticketmaster RESALE, ViaGoGo, Ebay, Gumtree & The Ticket Merchant).”
However, tickets for Splendour’s other sideshows, including highly coveted tickets to At The Drive-In’s first Australian shows since 2001, didn’t appear online until after they’d all sold out, which begs the question of how the Cure tickets reached Ticketmaster Resale.
Presumably, scalpers are making pre-emptive listings on the site in the hopes of securing tickets once they go on sale. A similar phenomenon occurs in the lead-up to Record Store Day, with exclusive releases listed on eBay days before they’re set to go on sale.
What’s particularly troubling about this is that fans could purchase these phantom tickets before the pre-sale launches and then suffer the inconvenience of pursuing Ticketmaster for a refund should the listing prove to be bogus, i.e. the scalper doesn’t get the tickets.
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This also begs the question of why a resale facility like Ticketmaster’s doesn’t have protections in place to avoid this kind of exploitation, but it’s not all that surprising given the company’s cavalier attitude towards criticism of its controversial facility.
Speaking to The Music, a spokesperson for Ticketmaster said it is consumers and not the sites who are responsible for the prices that appear. “For high-demand events, it is inevitable that a resale market will exist,” the spokesperson said.
“Ticket holders, not Ticketmaster Resale, control the inventory and the price of the tickets, which can be listed above or below the original face value.”
