Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Now we move to the news that it's almost five years since Ireland introduced anti-ticket touting legislation. And many new measures have been introduced on the ticketing platform Ticketmaster to tackle the touts. But a quick scan online around any big event will show us that tickets are being sold for multiples of faced value. So what are the loopholes now and how can they be closed?
Newstalk's tech correspondent Jess Kelly joins us now. Hello, Jess. Good morning.
Chapter 2: What is the current state of anti-ticket touting legislation in Ireland?
Is anything working?
Yes and no, perhaps, maybe so. It depends on how you look at it, right? So this is an important piece of legislation that came into play a number of years ago after huge outcries and big calls for change to happen. Noel Rock, who was a Fine Gael TD at the time, sort of led the charge, highlighted the fact that fans who wanted to go to, say, U2 at Croke Park, that seemed to be a big turning point.
were being out bought by bots and by touts. So there were professionals who could go online, buy up to 20 tickets at a time, sell them on ticket resale sites within a matter of minutes for multiples of face value. And because people were desperate to see the act in question, they were paying it. After a lot of conversations, a lot of debate, this legislation was brought forward.
So it's called the Sale of Tickets Cultural Entertainment, Recreational and Sporting Events Act 2021 came into play. Now, it's only when you read the detail that you see some of the issues that were very much highlighted by tickets for the Ryder Cup going on sale recently.
And that is that from a fundamental point of view, it is illegal in this country to sell or advertise for sale a ticket that exceeds the original for sale price if the event is taking place in a designated event space. So, for example, Croke Park, the Viva Stadium, Three Arena, Thoman Park, all of those are designated arenas or venues.
That means that any event that goes on there, the tickets must be sold at face value and it is illegal to sell them above face value. What's happened with the Ryder Cup, however, is we know that it's taking place in Adair and that is not one of the designated venues.
So you can sell your Ryder Cup ticket for whatever you want and you're not breaking the law. Exactly. But even if you do break the law and you resell a ticket at any of those venues, the likelihood is, given what we've seen since that law came into effect, nobody's been convicted. So the likelihood is you're not going to get caught.
It's a whole load of none.
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Chapter 3: What loopholes exist in the current ticket resale laws?
And this is something that I looked at extensively last year, particularly when the Oasis gigs were happening, not only here in Ireland, but also elsewhere around the world. We had covered over the last number of years here on Newstalk new features that Ticketmaster brought into play to try and keep fans safe on the platform and also ensure that genuine fans were getting to the gigs.
So things like safe tics, So this is if you've gone to a gig in the last number of years, you'll now see the Ticketmaster is pushing you to get the Ticketmaster app. You can't take a screenshot of a ticket. They're doing away with PDFs. It's that refreshing barcode. They are price capping on the platforms. There's verified fan, there's fan resale. They've done a whole lot.
in terms of within their ecosystem. But last year, around the time the Oasis were playing in Croke Park, I heard and I witnessed in one instance, paper tickets being resold for multiples of face value, because in some instances, some specialist music retailers had access to tickets. Some promoters had access to tickets. We're putting them out there to the market.
They were either giving them to friends and family who were then reselling them. So say a ticket was 175 euro. I know of one example where a 175 euro ticket was resold for 500 euro cash. There's also the instance of people doing private transactions on Revolut. So people will put up on a social media post that they have tickets.
It's, you know, 175 euro, selling it for 300 euro, DM me and Revolut me the money.
And they can transfer that ticket then to that person readily enough, can't they?
Yeah, exactly. You just put in someone's email address because Ticketmaster, and this is one of the loopholes that exists, is that Ticketmaster, how could they know between me sending you a ticket to go as colleagues versus me selling a ticket to Cormac out there because he's paying me 500 quid?
How will Ticketmaster know if a transaction is taking place when the financial side of it is being done on a third party platform? That is a significant issue. And I think there are like if I could sit down at a computer for a few hours and identify readily available and identifiable touts.
You have to wonder why Angarajia Conagh and some of the investigative bodies and indeed Ticketmaster aren't doing that and make an example of the people that are scalping and that are touting because there is big money at play here and it's also the fans who lose out.
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