How to avoid a scam that preys on big-ticket events

Imagine being a parent of Ed Sheeran fans unable to get tickets for one of the singer's two Croke Park concerts in the summer of 2015. You would not have been alone: a staggering 160,000 tickets sold out in just an hour five months before the concerts, and the organisers reckoned there was easily enough demand for a third night.

Fearful of a repeat of the Garth Brooks unpleasantness of a year earlier, they decided not to push it.

Knowing your child would be heartbroken, you might have tried alternative channels to get your hands on precious tickets. A lot of people did and, as the dates approached, there were stories of tickets selling for as much as €800 a pop.

Now imagine getting four tickets from an online source: someone you came across on DoneDeal. They might have had a great backstory; they could have told you they were die-hard fans but couldn’t go because their dear old granny had died.

You would have been sad for them but happy for yourself and your children. Now imagine arriving at Croke Park and presenting four tickets to the security people only to be told that they were fake. All the cajoling and pleading in the world would count for nothing.

After all the stress of sourcing the tickets and after all the money spent on them, you would have had nothing to show for it but distraught children.

Sounds horrendous, right? It happened to at least 100 people last summer. And it will most likely happen to hundreds more in the months ahead. Some victims might be Justin Bieber fans, others heading to Electric Picnic. Fraudsters have no musical taste and absolutely no scruples, and anywhere they see demand, they will go.

Dodgy dealer

Not long ago about 40 Adele fans were left heartbroken when they were denied entry to her sold-out shows at the 3 Arena after the tickets they bought from a dodgy dealer turned out to be bogus. And in recent weeks a Cork family were left poorer and sadder when tickets they bought from a UK-based website for Ireland's opening Euro 2016 game against Sweden in Paris failed to show up.

The proliferation of counterfeit tickets prompted Ticketmaster to issue a warning to all would-be concert-goers to be on the lookout for scammers.

Pricewatch met the head of Ticketmaster in Ireland, Keith English, to find out how serious the problem is. "It's very difficult to quantify because until people actually turn up at the doors, we don't know what is happening. But we do know that the scammers are attracted to high-demand shows," he says.

And who are the scammers? “I think the fraud is being perpetrated by a combination of individuals and organised groups. We have seen certain patterns of behaviour that make us think that the people selling the tickets are not actually the people behind the scams, because the operation is more organised than that.”

Typically, the buyer comes across the seller on an online platform. And then the “meet in public places so the buyers are not going to offices and the sellers then become extremely difficult to track down,” English says. “People are making connections on the internet, and the sellers are presenting themselves as people who really want to go to the concert but, as a result of some family bereavement or something else, have to sell the tickets. They have every appearance of being legitimate.”

Scanning system

The tickets are usually e-tickets, which are very easy to fake, but they can also be actual tickets, English warns. “If someone can fake a passport, they can certainly fake concert tickets. We don’t look at the actual tickets; we put our emphasis on the scanning system in place at the point of entry.”

He says the key is where people buy tickets and not what the tickets looks like. “If I am a consumer and I want to buy a ticket what I need to ask myself is do I know the person and will I be able to see them again after the event ?”

He suggests Seatwave – the controversial Ticketmaster-owned ticket reselling website – is another answer. The service allows people to trade tickets securely and, if there are any problems, then buyers are fully indemnified. However, Ticketmaster has been accused of facilitating touting and takes a percentage of the sale of each ticket resold – on top of the percentage it took when the ticket was first sold – so it is in its interests to direct people to Seatwave.

But English says Ticketmaster is not acting out of self-interest. He says it is the punters, not Ticketmaster, who are losing out if people show up with fake tickets.

“Everything we are talking about is being driven by consumer behaviour . . . If you remove Seatwave, then there will be thousands of others to take its place and it will change nothing and we will have absolutely no oversight. At least with Seatwave you can be offered some form of consumer support and comeback.”

Highlighting fraud

He says it is “only one of many answers but we still have to get the message out there that scammers are operating. I would not think that by highlighting fraud we are helping anyone in the reselling market.

“The reason we are highlighting this is to try and stamp it out, although I don’t know if we could ever stop this kind of thing – it has been going on since the days of the colosseum.”

He sympathises with parents who “feel this great responsibility to fulfil the wishes of their children”, who will “go to any extreme to get a ticket as a birthday present or as a Christmas present”.

“But who do you think is standing there turning these families away? You’d would want to be heartless for it not to affect you when the kids are standing there without a clue as to what is going on, and we are the one standing there saying ‘You can’t come in’.”

Successful prosecutions

English says Ticketmaster has a good relationship with the Garda, “and there have been a number of successful prosecutions as a result. We have pointed the guards in certain directions.”

He cites a very recent example. Ticketmaster was contacted by an event organiser regarding fake tickets. “We contacted police yesterday and they contacted the victim and yesterday they put a sting operation in place and a man was arrested. I can’t say any more about it at this stage, but it is as current as that.”

DoneDeal, where event tickets are frequently sold, is also working with the industry to combat touting and scams. “DoneDeal’s policy specifically in relation to the sale of tickets is to adhere to the ticket sale policies of the various event organisers, and agents including Ticketmaster,” says Finbarr Garland, the the website’s safety officer.

He urges the public to report any suspicious ads and scams associated with the DoneDeal website so it can “take the necessary actions and work with both Ticketmaster and the gardaí . . . in our efforts to jointly tackle ticket scams.”