Tickets for the fundraiser (taking place at Koko in London on 1st May as part of the charity's Big Ask campaign) went on sale on March 11th, and quickly sold out. Immediately after, the £55 tickets began appearing on internet auction sites, with sellers demanding more than £300 for tickets. Due to the nature of touting, none of the profits being made by the original buyers will benefit the campaign.
A spokesperson for the charity declared their disappointment today, explaining: "We have done everything within our power to ensure that fans had access to the tickets at the price fixed by Friends Of The Earth - for example by limiting purchases to two tickets per person".
There's lots of internet petitions calling for the Government to make it illegal, and promoters have also started to say it's a problem and have called for the Government to act. But the Department of Culture, Media and Sport don't see it as their place to get involved. Any problem with touts, they reckon, should be dealt with by venues and promoters.
Although promoters and venues tend to agree that touts are a problem for genuine fans, there are few who use the systems available that make touting near enough impossible, as their main concern is selling tickets. Of course, the touts work on a supply and demand basis, so maybe we, the public, should just stop playing their game!
Until the unlikely event of a law being passed to outlaw touting, promoters and venues are the only ones capable of making sure that the unfair practice of touting is ended once and for all. Hopefully the Radiohead/Friends Of The Earth situation, and its surrounding publicity, will take them one step closer to putting an end to such unfair and greedy opportunism!
article by: Lulu Newton
published: 15/03/2006 17:22