It is already a classic: the international megagroup announcing that it is putting tickets on sale for its macro-concert at X hour and you, who have been waiting 30 minutes for ‘the doors’ to open to buy them, suddenly you find yourself in a virtual queue of 120,000 people. And the worst of all is that most of those who have beaten you are bot with dubious intentions.
It is precisely those dubious intentions that we have come to talk about today in 20Bit. Of how an underworld of ticket resale has been createdfacilitated in large part by current technological tools, and what do artists want to do about it, fed up with seeing their loyal fans get angry and cry to heaven for having to overpay to attend their concerts.
This controversy has recently intensified thanks to the denunciation on the subject What has the group done? heavy metal German Ramstein. The band has gone to court against Viagogo, one of the websites that currently exists for ticket resale – and one of the platforms behind the massive purchases, probably with bot-.
The group’s goal is to prevent tickets for its European tour for 2023 from being resold on the platform.. Specifically, Rammstein, together with the European promoter MCT Agentur, has managed to get the Regional Court of hamburg issue a court order legally prohibiting Viagogo from secondary selling the tickets of their concerts.
This is the second time that the Hamburg Regional Court has legally prohibited the Swiss-based company from reselling Rammstein tickets.after a identical court order in 2018. Likewise, they point out, the court order is “based on the consumer protection regulations that were newly defined in May 2022”.
nominative tickets
In addition to prohibiting its resale, only the person whose full name appears on the ticket, which will be verified with an identification card. At the time of purchase, you will have to enter the name and ID and this information will appear in the input.
Eventim is the only authorized platform to sell tickets for Rammstein’s 2023 European tour shows. This means that if you buy a ticket on a resale page you will not have any rights, This is explained in the conditions of the Doctor Music websitethe organizer of the concert that the German group gives in Madrid in June 2023 as part of its world tour.
“If you have purchased your ticket for a concert organized by Doctor Music on a resale page (for example, Viagogo, Stubhub, Gigsberg, etc.), you have been the victim of a fraudbecause is not valid to attend the concert nor does it grant any other right”, states the website.
In the event that a buyer is unable to attend, the resale will only be possible through the fansALE website distributed by Eventim, and the transaction can only be made from December 1, 2022.
The search engine problem
For years, the group has cracked down on ticket scalpers who sell invalid and overpriced tickets. “The court’s decision is a warning sign to anyone who thinks they can sell invalid and overpriced Rammstein tickets and advertise them on popular search engines”, they said when the first sentence was produced in 2018, which affected the concerts of his tour in Germany in 2019.
One of the main criticisms is the favorable positioning of secondary sales platforms in browser search results. Namely, group suggests resale portals are favored by SEOso that their posts appear at the top, dwarfing even the official channels.
To reach Internet users, resale portals invest a lot of money in advertising, either on search engines like Google or on social networks like Facebook. In fact, placing ads for specific events that they know will generate a lot of interest is their number one source of customer acquisition. Such is the case, that in the face of the havoc and commotion that this type of portal is causing, Google made the decision in July 2019 to exclude Viagogo from its advertising program.
Current legislation leaves a legal vacuum
The problem with this is that there is no clear regulation. The current legislation on the sale of tickets dates back to the 1980s and according to jurists it is an obsolete law, since it was created before Internet became popular in Spain.
Thus, the only currently applicable state regulation is RD 2816/1982, which approves the Police Regulations for Public Shows and Recreational Activities, which in its article 67.2 prohibits the street or itinerant sale and resale of tickets (localities). It does not say anything about the consequences of this type of action if they are done virtually, that is why we say that online resale is in a loophole.
Subsequently, the Autonomous Communities have acquired powers in matters of public spectaclesso most have resale regulations. But only Galicia expressly prohibits the secondary sale of tickets on-line.
This framework has led to the appearance of various portals dedicated exclusively to the resale of shows, concerts and sporting events, such as the aforementioned Viagogo. They are websites that have the appearance of being an official page, but in practice are channels where tickets are sold at much higher prices.
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After the ticket resale: hordes of bots take control of them so that you overpay for attending the concert of your favorite band