Midnight Oil have got a master plan to stamp out ticket scalping
Frontier Touring has pointed to seven steps intended to bring scalpers to a screeching halt.
Needless to say, the announcement of Midnight Oil’s first tour in 15 years last week had their fans pretty damn excited, but we also can’t help but picture the hoard of ticket scalpers rubbing their hands together at the prospect of such a ridiculously sought-after item.
Turns out that the Oils have been paying attention to the ticket scalping that has continued to plague the music business since they were last on the scene, and they’ve got one hell of a plan in place to stop their eager fans from being ripped off.
Speaking to the Herald Sun, frontman Peter Garrett has described the dire situation in pretty blunt wording.
“Scalping has become a monumental rip-off,” he says. “It’s urgent that we rein in low-life companies and individuals profiteering from music lovers by this disgusting practice.”
The band’s manager John Watson also condemned the practice, pointing out that the measures they’ve put in place are designed to counteract the huge technical advantage scalpers have over a regular punter.
“All the things we are doing are creating speed humps to slow down scalpers who have so much tech resources and give them less of an advantage,” he tells The Herald Sun. “It is easy for someone to have 100 email addresses and multiple credit cards but not as easy to have 100 post office boxes. You can monitor the addresses and if there are multiple tickets going to one address, then we can look at other action.”
But how exactly will the band manage to stamp out scalping ahead of their World Tour? The tour promoter, Frontier Touring, has detailed the master plan to Music Feeds, pointing to seven steps intended to bring scalpers to a screeching halt.
For one, only physical tickets will be offered, apparently making it easier to track huge volumes of tickets as detailed above. Ticket presales and general sales will also be limited to 4 and 10 tickets respectively, and will be posted directly to purchasers fairly last-minute, giving scalpers no lead time to sell them off.
Tickets will only be able to be purchased through either Ticketmaster, Ticketek or TECC, but for those of us concerned by the ability for people to profit from resales through the former pair’s controversial resale facility, don’t worry – resales can only be conducted via UK outlet Twickets, which only allows for resales at cost price.
This final step is a massive improvement over the profiteering found on services like Ticketmaster’s much-derided official resale site and, while it won’t be able to prevent scalping in its entirety, it’s at least putting up a significant roadblock.
No matter how many hurdles the band and tour management throw up, however, we’re still going to see huge demand for the gigs driving overpriced tickets, and the best solution will be to do everything you can to snatch them up as soon as they’re on sale.
For more info on ticket sale times and to check out the huge run of dates, head over here.
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.