4 Takeaways from “The Good News about Secondary Ticketing” ADE Panel
Last month during ADE, TicketSwap CEO Hans Ober was on a panel discussing secondary ticketing, the problem and its potential solutions. He was joined by Jurrien de Wit from Q-Dance, one of the biggest and most influential Hardstyle promoters in NL and abroad, and Ken Lowson from Tixfan, formerly one of the most profilic ticket bot operators in theworld and now a consultant for fan-focused secondary ticketing solutions. The panel was hosted by Atze de Vrieze, music journalist from 3Voor12.
For just over 40 minutes on stage at the DeLaMar Theater, the epicentre of ADE, the four panelists tackled different aspects of the secondary ticketing issue, while putting forward their own perspective on how the problem is evolving and is being solved. Below, we’ll walk through some of the key takeaways from the panel, including some of the best quotes from each participant. You can read the transcript in full here.
1. Secondary ticketing in the Dance music scene may be different, but not immune to touting.
“It’s different in Dance. There’s so many genres and subgenres. But it’s really music that has unity.” — Jurrien de Wit, Q-Dance
The sense of unity within dance and electronic music communities is part of what sets it apart from genres, and makes events like ADE possible. Yet is it something that makes it perhaps more immune to the negativity that comes with secondary ticketing on mainstream events like say Ed Sheeran or Adele? The panelists were not all in agreement. Undeniably, a niche and closeknit sub-genre like Hardstyle might be harder for touts and professional resellers to infiltrate, without a huge backlash (such as the response among Q-Dance fans when the organisation briefly worked with Viagogo after being purchased by SFX Entertainment).
However, Ken argued that the problem still remains: “If you get rid of everybody [i.e the the professional resellers and the bots], what do you do with the fan who has tickets that are suddenly worth 3 times [the price] and they want to sell them? Doesn’t the fan become the secondary dealer at that point.” For Ken, a seller’s behaviour, whether they are a normal fan or a professional reseller, is likely to be driven by the potential value of the good they can sale, in this case a ticket, rather than loyalty to the Dance community.
Is this behaviour likely to be different for a Q-Dance ticket holder compared to a Justin Bieber ticket holder? Perhaps yes. Q-Dance’s response to the outcry, was to work with their primary ticket company, Paylogic, and TicketSwap to provide a transparent, fair and safe alternative. By giving their fans an easy way to buy and sell spare tickets safely, Q-Dance has tapped into this Dance unity and made it almost inexcusable and unheard of for a true fan to consider selling their ticket for a huge profit. If given the same opportunity, would a Justin Bieber fan do the same? TicketSwap’s record in the Netherlands and across Europe suggests they would (check out some stats here).
2. The core of the issue lies in the primary ticketing.
“It’s sort of silly to think: ‘I’m gonna sell something to somebody, take their money, and then tell them what to do with it afterwards.’ It goes against regular rules of capitalism.” — Ken Lowson, Tixfan
All three panelists agreed that a large part of the secondary ticketing problem begins with the way that tickets are sold on the primary. Presales and ‘insider’ deals, mean that before tickets even go on the general public sale, sometimes 60% or more of a venue’s capacity have already been sold or given away, destined to end up for sale at inflated prices on secondary sites. Hans’ example of the Rolling Stones world tour, where having an AMEX (American Express credit card) would allow some ‘customers’ the ability to buy tickets a day before they went on public sale, is actually a standard practice for most in-demand events across the globe and makes it easy for touts to get their hands on tickets. By the time tickets go on general sale, they predictably sell out in 3 minutes flat. To Hans it seems “it’s easy to blame secondary market for high prices [but] if you look at the whole system you see that that’s where it goes wrong.”
Much of the legislative discussion around addressing secondary ticketing has focused on measures banning bots or resale above face value, but if most tickets never go on primary sale and end up in the hands of brokers or touts, will these laws have much impact? For Ken, the biggest red herring is the current legislative drive to ban Bots: “If 80% of the house is held back and dealt on the ‘inside’…the Bots can’t really be responsible for seats that never were sold in the first place.” Certainly, getting rid of Bots is a step in the right direction but it is by no means a panacea. Only by shedding light on exactly where the bulk of tickets end up before public sale will fans and governments actually have a real impact on the problem. Until then “…there are no laws at the primary level. There are no laws where someone says what to do with the tickets. None. It’s the wild wild west — It’s always gonna be there unless there will be rules made in the primary.” [Ken] It seems that before the entertainment industry can address the damage professional reselling has done to fans on the secondary market, they need to take a long hard look at the current practices of primary ticketing and how they enable touting.
3. Personalisation of tickets is a growing trend but not yet a complete solution
“I truly believe that if you ask your fans to buy tickets for over a year in advance, they should be able to resell it.” — Hans Ober, TicketSwap
Personalisation of tickets, the tying of a ticket to a person’s identity, has quickly become the go-to approach for performers and event organisers looking to eliminate touting. The music industry, in particular, has adopted this method in several high-profile superstar tours, such as Ed Sheeran and Metallica. What’s not to like? In theory, a ticket cannot be resold because the original ticket holder’s name is on the ticket and any attendee must show ID matching this name, with no exceptions. Yet according to Ken, even this strict approach can be circumvented with brokers in the US just “getting the client’s credit cards. Then the initial purchase will be made for the person who is going, with their credit card and they just pay premium for that service.” It certainly makes it more difficult for touts , but its not actually 100% effective against the more determined professional resellers. But what’s the impact on normal fans? As we explored in an earlier blog post, buying a ticket 6 months in advance becomes a huge gamble for fans, if they are not allowed to resell their spare tickets and not given an alternative way to recoup their money if they can no longer attend.
For Jurrien, “In an ideal world, we would have a platform where tickets don’t exist anymore.” Each ‘entry’ would be distributed to Q-Base members to ensure only fans were getting the tickets at the price set by Q-Dance. Yet there are a few barriers to making this happen, such as multiple-ticketing system integration, management of customer data, and control of the venue entrance. Offering a middle ground, the Secure Swap system, employed by Q-Dance together with TicketSwap and Paylogic, has helped maintain the personalisation of tickets, even after they have been resold. With Secure Swap, a resold ticket is replaced with a brand new ticket with a new barcode and the name of the new buyer.
4. So what’s the good news? Transparency is coming, slowly but surely
“The only thing that helps fans, is to make things transparent.” — Ken Lowson, Tixfan
Regulations, like the new ACM rules in the Netherlands or the Consumer Rights Act in the UK, have sought to inject new transparency into the ticketing industry, both primary and secondary ticketing. In the Netherlands, ticketing websites, including TicketSwap, have complied with a ban on drip pricing ensuring the consumer has the final price of ticket in the first instance. Meanwhile in the UK, secondary websites are now required to clearly display information about the tickets being offered, including the seller, the section and any restrictions with the usage of the ticket. These may seem like modest steps for most fans, and they do not actually address the core problems at the heart of ticketing discussed by the panelists, but perhaps they signal a change in the right direction. In Ken’s perspective, the industry is starting to wake up to the fact that “the end consumer has to be more satisfied with the system. The whole industry is gonna have problems if they don’t make that happen.”
Solutions that put consumers first and introduce transparency into ticketing, like what we are doing at TicketSwap, are becoming more common and widely used. This has a knock on effect that fans are looking at tickets differently, and as a result event organisers, performers, venues and even ticket companies are starting to take notice. For example, according to Hans: “ADE is not much bigger than the year before [in terms of the number of events], but we’ve seen a big increase in ticket sales, it’s because people, fans are now looking at tickets in a different way and fans are starting to get used to it….With working with us, we make the whole loop, the whole circle complete. ”
At the end of the day, as more transparency enters the industry, more organisers are taking responsibility to protect their fans. Jurrien feels that Q-Dance’s goal for ticketing should be “to give the experience to the fan. The total experience should also be collected in the way they buy tickets so every fan can buy its ticket for a fair price…Music is built on unity, so when fans use their voice to speak about cost of tickets, that’s making a difference.”
