Tickets for Oasis’ Scottish gigs were selling for £5,000 on tout sites last night – nearly 30 times their face value. The rock band have warned that anyone buying secondary tickets from unofficial websites would see them cancelled.
But Scottish music industry experts last night said it’s nearly impossible to prevent touts from profiting on the huge gigs. Noel and Liam Gallagher announced last week that they were reforming their band after a 15 year split and embarking on a massive tour next summer which includes three August dates at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield.
Millions of fans scrambled for tickets, starting at £65, after they went on general sale yesterday morning at 9am. But within hours, ticket tout resale website Viagogo was offering seating tickets for Section E14 for £4,977 – that’s more than 29 times their £167 face value.
Last night, Donald McLeod, one of Scotland’s leading concert promoters, slammed the rip offs and said only government legislation would stop it. He first promoted the band in 1993 in Glasgow when they were an up and coming support act and finally at Murrayfield in Edinburgh in 2009 when they had become global headlining superstars, shortly before they split.
He backed the stern warning issued yesterday by Oasis promoters that they would cancel any tickets that had been sold on the black market, in breach of the original terms and conditions.
He said: “The warning issued by the promoters to only go through the official channels is the only thing and the right thing to do. But how do you police it from that point on? That is the problem.
“As a member of the Concert Promoters Association I am against ticket touting. Touts contribute nothing to the safety or the production of the show. They give nothing back to the band.”
Over the years Donald’s firm CPL has put on sellout Oasis concerts across Scotland including venues like the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow and the Ingliston showground in Edinburgh.
He also promoted their famous concert in August 1996 at Balloch in Loch Lomond, which attracted more than 80,000 people. Donald added: “Nobody should be paying more than the face price on the ticket, even if they want to.
“Blatant profiteering on tickets is disgusting and a disgrace. It is a massive problem no more so now with people able to forge and duplicate tickets.
“The problem is that Oasis could probably pay ten nights at Murrayfield and demand would still be there. They are that big.”
Donald would support random security checks by Oasis promoters on ticket holders at concert venues, like Murrayfield, but accepts that could be difficult to enforce.
He added: “You also have the problem with people turning up without tickets on the night and there will be thousands of them. It is a very daunting and difficult task for security. The promoters are between a rock and a hard place because they don’t want to stop people’s fun on the night.”
Donald would like to see legal measures in the UK to target ticket touts and unauthorised secondary ticket sites. He added: “In countries around the world there is more robust legislation in place.
“Over the years the government have been approached many many times to crack down on secondary ticketing and to date they have allowed it or ignored it.
“People are sick of seeing prices for these events inflated. The price set should be the price paid. That is the bottom line.”
Some Oasis fans were lucky with official sites like Ticketmaster yesterday to get their hands on the gold dust tickets while others waited for hours only to find the website chuck them out the queue and decide they were a ‘bot’.
Oasis fan Harris McLeod, 16, was delighted last night when his older brother Daniel secured him a ticket for the Murrayfield gig next year.
He said: “It’s brilliant to get a ticket, I really didn’t think would ever get a chance to see them even better that the stadium is just a half an hour walk from my house”
His older sister Cassie, 19, was not so lucky. She said: “I have been kicked off the site about three times and I’m now just under 200,000th in the queue.”
Oasis fan David Russell from Bathgate said: “I was in the queue for over four hours, I got from 62,000 in the queue to number 1. Immediately I went in to book my ticket and it said straight away, ‘We think you are a bot’ and it cut me off.
“I’ve spoken with various different family members and everyone has had the exact same experience. No-one’s been successful.”
Similar issues have been reported for the band’s dates in London, Manchester Cardiff and Dublin.
Cris Miller, Viagogo global managing director, defended his website’s practice of listing Oasis tickets for thousands of pounds, saying that “resale is legal in the UK and fans are always protected by our guarantee that they will receive their tickets in time for the event or their money back”.
Stubhub were approached for comment.
Ticketmaster said via a spokeswoman that the site had not crashed.
She also said: “The queue is moving along as fans buy tickets. As anticipated, millions of fans are accessing our site so have been placed in a queue.”
DF Concerts, the promoters of the Scottish gigs, didn’t comment when asked about how to tackle the touts.
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