Bringing down the hammer on ticket auctioning?

There could soon be measures in place to deal with the contentious issue of ticket touting – and it’s close relative, ticket auctioning. As exclusively revealed in the last issue of Hot Press, there are plans afoot to introduce a ticket auctioning system into this country, after similar moves were successful in the US recently. But Jimmy Deenihan, Fine Gael’s spokesperson on Arts, Sport and Tourism, says that he may amend the proposed FG Anti-Touting bill to incorporate anti-ticket auctioning measures.
Although ticket auctioning has been imposed on fans in the US for some years now, the first all-auction gig event, INXS at the Lobero Theatre, only took place in June this year. That concert was a complete sell-out: fans paid anywhere from $20 to $350 on the official StubHub auction site.
As the higher of those figures indicates, where auctioning has been in force, fans have sometimes ended up paying the same, if not more, for an auctioned ticket than they would have paid to a tout. With MCD announcing that auctioning will probably happen here at some stage, fears have been raised that it's ordinary fans who'll continue to lose out.
Jimmy Deenihan says that this would be totally unacceptable. In order to pre-empt that prospect, he now plans to investigate whether Fine Gael’s Anti-Touting bill (first proposed in 1998) would be able to incorporate measures to deal with auctioning.
“I will have to consider if this bill could apply to those circumstances,” he told Hot Press. “It’s something that certainly will have to be reviewed because this practice of auctioning is a new trend that is developing. Certainly, what I will do when we return in September, or even before that, is look at the possibility of amending the bill again to include circumstances like the auctioning of tickets for exorbitant prices.”
Deenihan accepts the premise that something needs to be done to combat touts – but he is adamant that the public should not be abused by event organisers.
“If it’s just ticket touting in another, official guise, then it must be addressed,” he insists. “I think it would be very, very foolish of any organisation involved in the organising of concerts and the sale of tickets to exploit the genuine music or sports fan in any way – because it could lead to the law of diminishing returns.
“The whole issue of ticket touting and the exploitation of genuine fans throughout the length and breadth of the country is not a priority issue for this Government,” he charges. “People are becoming increasingly frustrated because for major concerts the tickets are being snapped up by touts and organisations and the genuine fan is not getting the opportunity to buy a ticket. That should be addressed by legislation, not by auctioning of tickets.”
Deenihan says that he will investigate the auctioning of tickets further and will then decide if the Anti-Touting bill should be amended to deal with the practice: “I will have further consultation with the sporting and music organisations and the various ticket outlets and see if what I’m proposing can be improved – and also with the government, if they’re serious about tackling this issue.”
As the man said, don’t hold your breath.