Credit: Found On Internet

The days of that yellow-toothed bloke shouting ‘BUY AND SELL TICKETS!’ outside gigs haven’t gone yet, but there is a lot more profitable way to do it these days. The last two years have seen the growth of a tout market that has become so big, it is considerably larger then some of the companies that actually put on the shows it is touting for. This 'tout market' has even got a proper 'legit' name these days - Secondary Ticketing.

Secondary Ticketing was apparently worth up to £200m in 2007, with the primary ticket market at £790m over the same period. Could that be possible? In two years, could the more respectable side of the tout market have swelled to be worth a quarter of the old, legit ticket-selling industry?

In a meeting last week, I found myself in a room where Viagogo, Seatwave, Getmein, etc, were all represented. Interestingly, they are all Americans. I can’t help but think along the lines of ‘Americans coming over here, with their convienent user-friendly technology and free market ethics’ in order to exploit our own greed.

It would seem most UK promoters have slept through the development of this industry - it is more then their jobs' worth to deal with them. Now it would seem this strategy may have been to their peril. As it becomes established, and worth so much, it becomes a lot harder to legislate against, plus now some of the bigger artists are thinking – ‘maybe we can make a load more money here’...

So should the government ban secondary ticket selling? In that aforementioned room, where the great and the good in the industry allegedly came to try to come to some kind of consensus, it couldn't seem further away. This conference was a mess of claims and counter-claims, but sifting through everyone’s opinion there are essentially 3 outcomes.

1. Allow concert tickets to be sold again but for only 10% more the original price
2. Allow concert tickets to be sold again but with a tithe going back to the artists
3. Allow concert tickets to be sold again – i.e do nothing at all.

 The last time the government sat down at talked about this, they all went ‘errm , do you think? Is that the time… I have to rush...’ and went for option 3. Now in 2008, they are umming and ahhing over a law that requires buyers of paintings to pay a tribute to the original artist...and in the end will probably once again go for something like option 3 - and do nothing solid again until the industry really is in a mess.