British singer and Grammy nominee Olivia Dean has won partial refunds from Ticketmaster after condemning ticketing companies for “vile” prices at which they’re allowing tickets to be resold.
Shortly after tickets for her North American tour went on sale and appeared on resale sites for over $1,000 – or at 14 times their original face value – Dean went on Instagram to address major ticketing companies:
“@Ticketmaster @Livenation @AEGPresents you are providing a disgusting service. The prices at which you’re allowing tickets to be re-sold is vile and completely against our wishes. Live music should be affordable and accessible and we need to find a new way of making that possible. BE BETTER.”
In response, Ticketmaster first said: “We support artists’ ability to set the terms of how their tickets are sold and resold. @OliviaDeano, we will cap resale prices on our site at face value and hope other resale sites will follow.”
Later, the company revealed that it is in the process of “refunding fans for any markup they already paid to resellers on Ticketmaster”.
According to The Guardian, Michael Rapino, CEO of Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation Entertainment, said in a statement: “We share Olivia’s desire to keep live music accessible and ensure fans have the best access to affordable tickets.
“While we can’t require other marketplaces to honour artists’ resale preferences, we echo Olivia’s call to ‘do better’ and have taken steps to lead by example.”
On Instagram, Dean called the secondary ticket market “an exploitative and unregulated space”, adding that every artist should be able to cap resale at face value ahead of tickets going on sale.
Taylor Swift fans had to battle with an inflated ticket prices problem before: crooks used bots to create millions and millions of accounts, trying to purchase tickets as soon as they went live and crashed the website with 3.5 billion requests. These tickets were bought up for a few hundred dollars and later resold for thousands.
In the UK, the government has confirmed plans to make reselling tickets for live entertainment and sports events at a higher price illegal after an open letter by industry giants, including Dua Lipa. In the US, such laws vary widely by location, but using bots to buy tickets in bulk is illegal under federal law.
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