TICKETS FOR the Ireland-England rugby game are on sale for up to €1,885 on a website owned by Ticketmaster, which has previously expressed opposition to the activities of touts charging vastly inflated prices. Paul Cullen, Consumer Affairs Correspondent, reports
Get Me In!, an online ticket agent which was recently acquired by Ticketmaster UK, is selling tickets held by third parties for Dublin concerts by Bruce Springsteen for up to €440, Niall Diamond for €495 and Nick Cave for €149. The website charges an additional 17 per cent processing fee.
Ticketmaster, which controls the sale of the vast majority of tickets for Irish sporting and music events, denies it is engaged in touting through its involvement in the website; rather, it says it is trying to regulate the growing "secondary" market for event tickets.
A spokesman said it had been experiencing problems with counterfeit tickets which people were buying from other websites. When they turned up at events, they were refused entry.
"Ticketmaster, in purchasing Get Me In!, is trying to regulate this situation so that people have somewhere to go if they want to put genuine tickets up for resale or purchase genuine tickets," a spokesman said. It would not be allocating any tickets from its system to the secondary resale market.
"Ticketmaster rejects any suggestion that it is engaging in a form of touting by being involved in this business. It is endeavouring to regulate or police this growing market."
The situation related only to the UK, he said, and nothing similar was happening in Ireland.
However, yesterday, getmein. com was selling tickets to a variety of Irish events. A ticket for €114 on its face for Ireland's game against England is for sale at £1,320 (€1,885), with Get Me In! charging a further £465 (€664) in "processing fees" for a pair. Tickets for the Ireland-Wales rugby match are on sale for up to €630, compared to their face value of about €70. Boyzone tickets for the RDS were selling for up to €314, compared to a €50 face value.
Those selling tickets may include genuine fans who are unable to go to a particular event, but it is believed most tickets sold on online sites come from touts.
Last year, Ticketmaster issued a statement criticising ticket resale websites because genuine fans were being "ripped off" by online touts when they bought from unauthorised resellers.
Two years ago, Fine Gael TD Jimmy Deenihan drew up a private members' Bill to outlaw touting, but the Government said legislation was not needed to deal with the problem. Mr Deenihan said yesterday he planned to introduce a revised Bill later this spring, which would take account of the growth of online ticket sales.
"Touts are exploiting genuine music and sports fans and the Government seems to be doing nothing about it," he said.