Bands get behind levy onresold gig tickets

Thu 6th Dec, 2007 in International News

According to the Guardian newspaper in the UK, Radiohead, Robbie Williams and Arctic Monkeys are set to join forces – although sadly not to record a Christmas single. The artists are instead campaigning for a levy to be added to tickets resold on the internet, so that musicians can claim some of the profits made by scalpers.

KT Tunstall and The Verve are also among those proposing a Resale Rights Society, which would collect a fee from each ticket sold on eBay and other websites dedicated to re-sales. The demand for tickets to sold-out events in the UK is at an all-time high, the Guardian reported, with the market worth around £200m. A whopping £2m was spent on scalped tickets for the Spice Girls in October alone (but of course!).

Marc Marot, chairman-elect of the RRS and the former chief executive of Island Records, said the levy proposal was a “grown-up solution” to a “completely unregulated area”.

Eric Baker, chief executive of UK on-selling website Viagogo, begged to differ.

“We don’t understand the concept of taxing fans to buy tickets that have already been paid for,” he said. “That someone who bought a Robbie Williams ticket should pay an additional tax to Robbie Williams if they resell the ticket is completely nonsensical. If I sell my Ford car, and have already paid for it, I don’t have to pay Ford again when I sell it.”

So where do you stand – with the “grown-up solution” or the Ford analogy?

Here are the figures from the Guardian for the total sums spent on tickets on “secondary sites”. That £143,531 for Amy Winehouse obviously doesn’t buy you a good show…

£1,571,598 Spice Girls
£1,401,269 Take That
£419,398 Foo Fighters
£324,936 Celine Dion
£199,399 Bruce Springsteen
£194,632 Westlife
£144,102 Arctic Monkeys
£143,531 Amy Winehouse
£141,746 Kaiser Chiefs
£139,308 Led Zeppelin

Source: Tixdaq.com