Recent Comments

• hywel

  More likely to be the ridiculous Sharon Hodgson (whose private members bill has now officially failed in case anyone had missed that news).

• lobstermike2011

  The Seatwave missionFebruary 22, 2012 I started Seatwave back in 2006 to help fans get better access to tickets in a safe, transparent way. My mission was to ensure people got to see their favourite band or sporting event without having to resort to buying tickets on the black market. From the outset, we set up a number of guarantees to ensure fans got the tickets they had paid for (TicketIntegrity) and weren’t out of pocket if an event they’d bought tickets for was cancelled (TicketCover). With guarantees like these, we have consistently led the ticketing market towards more customer-friendly policies. Transparency and security were, and still are, our top priorities. As we state in the manifesto on our website: we will help people get to events and we’ll help them do it in a secure way. We also believe that fans should have the right to do what they want with tickets they have bought, including selling them at the going market rate. At Seatwave we provide a safe, secure and transparent marketplace for them to do so. Sellers can list tickets to any event of their choosing and can select their own selling price. We provide tools that show the market value of their tickets on our exchange over time as well as multiple fulfilment options and declining price functionality to enable them to sell their tickets in the most convenient way for them. Buyers on our platform have access to the same marketplace information, allowing them to make calculated decisions on the best time to buy tickets, according to how much they are willing to pay. Unfortunately, the proliferation of pre-sales for events means a number of people get early access to tickets. At least half or more of most fan clubs, for example, are made up of ticket brokers who are planning to resell, thus pushing up prices. For that reason, we’d like to see pre-sales eliminated, so that every buyer has fair access, and we’d like venues to publish the percentage of tickets available at the time of public sale, so that each buyer has a fair view of their chances. Seatwave itself does not buy any tickets for resale. Some Seatwave employees do purchase tickets and resell them, but we have a strict policy that puts them at a disadvantage to anyone else who sells on our site. Any selling by employees that does take place is such a small scale that it can’t affect the market in general, but it does mean those employees experience Seatwave from the customer’s perspective, which in turn helps us provide better service. There are people who argue that secondary ticketing per se is wrong, that fans should only pay the official ticket price and not a penny more. Some argue that a resale cap of 10% above the official price should be imposed. We believe that if you cap prices, you’ll create a huge black market – exactly the situation we’re trying to tackle with Seatwave. We also believe that an open ticket market such as ours will, in time, make that market more efficient and ultimately bring prices down for everyone. - Joe Cohen, Founder and CEO, Seatwave

• lobstermike2011

  Viagogo looks like they are going to come off the worst from tomorrow nights CH4 expose for doing deals directly with promoters and selling for their own profit. 29,000 tickets allocated to them for Take That tour, 4,500 for the V Festival, 9,000 for Coldplay, 3,000 for Westlife and the list goes on. Rihanna, Madonna etc. So joe public sellers are competing with the sites they list on? As if we didn't all know this already. It's going to be interesting viewing. Expect some Conservative right wing politicians to jump on the 'Ticket Tout' band wagon afterwards for a cheap sountbite.

• mourinho

  Sting plays the Henley Festival 04/07

• maurilad1982

  @hywel TOP MAN