Time to stamp out the touts

Time to stamp out the touts

As many as 800 people turned up at the V Festival sites last weekend, hoping to pick up tickets they had bought over the internet. This weekend it will be the same story at the Reading and Leeds festivals.

But the guy who promised to be in the car park with their tickets won't be. And, funnily enough, the mobile number he gave out won't work either.

As Rupert Jones reports this week, fraud experts estimate as many as 20,000 people will be scammed in ticket cons this summer.

Last week in Tony Levene's Capital Letters column, we highlighted seven dodgy websites falsely promising tickets. This week we report on SOS Master Tickets and readingfestivaltickets.co.uk, which also appear to have fleeced shedloads of music fans.

The conmen are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospects of further victims, desperate to get hold of tickets for other big gigs such as George Michael at Earls Court tomorrow and Madonna at Wembley next month.

It's not just the daft and desperate who fall for it. We have examined many scam sites in the past fortnight, and the more sophisticated ones carry official logos, updates on the festival line-ups and even weather forecasts for the big day. We're not talking trashy EuroMillones fake lotteries here.

The truth is that online ticket scamming is reaching epidemic levels. It's almost too easy to rip fans off.

And the response of the authorities? Almost zilch.

You can understand the fury of promoters.....continued below

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such as Melvin Benn, who's behind Reading, Leeds and Latitude, and co-produces Glastonbury. He tells us he has tried to convince civil servants to take the issue seriously. Trading standards also seem powerless to intervene, while a government agency which could shut down dodgy websites can't or won't act because the sites are often based overseas.

There is a brutal solution to this problem: ban secondary ticket selling. But a brutal solution, simple as it seems, will be impossible to enforce and leave many legitimate fans unable to pass on tickets for events they can no longer attend.

They tried it in football. Ebay has co-operated by not allowing touts to use its platform for selling tickets. Outside stadiums, though, the touts are still in force, albeit further from the gates than they used to be.

Sites such as Viagogo provide a platform for legitimately selling unwanted football tickets. Indeed, it has become the "official secondary ticketing partner" for clubs such as Chelsea.

A ban on secondary sales will mean such legitimate avenues for exchanging tickets will have to be closed.

So what can be done?

Legal action to close the sites is inevitably always too late. For example, the International Olympic Committee is taking action against various sites which promised the parents of double gold medal swimmer Rebecca Adlington, and others, tickets for Beijing. But the chances of seeing the money again (or securing a conviction) are low.

Benn reckons all that is needed is to set up a policing and monitoring unit which will jump in early and close dodgy sites. He believes it should cost no more than £250,000 or so a year - good value compared with the millions lost in fraud.

But the bill should be borne by the festival industry, not the taxpayer.

The government should also take a keener interest. It's four years to the London Games, so there's no excuse for a repeat of Beijing ticket rip-offs.