Turtlerock Forum

Interesting case, but of limited application. The judgment is here: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2006/1768.html

Essentially, BDO tried to impose a condition on the sale of tickets that if the ticket is bought for profit (ie scalping), it will be cancelled and the holder refused entry. Ebay challenged that, saying that it was misleading to say that because the condition was never included in the purchase of the ticket.

The judge had a look at the means by which the public could buy tickets, and found that in each case BDO didn't do enough to bring to the public's attention the fact that it sought to impose this condition on purchase. As the condition is somewhat unusual, the Court found that BDO had to bring the condition to the buyer's attention before the ticket was paid for, otherwise the condition would not be included in the contract for purchase. If not included, its misleading to say that it is.

So Ebay won. The judgment effectively says that there's no prohibition on cancelling tickets that are bought for profit, so long as you make this clear at the point of sale. BDO just has to improve its approach at POS to be covered.

Ignoring the legal issues, there's always the trick of actually enforcing the condition (if it was legal) and refusing people entry. Imagine the hue and cry if you'd bought a ticket from a scalper and were refused entry. Imagine if you'd bought it legitimately and were refused entry wrongly? Pretty thorny issue this, and no easy solution.

Personally, I'm not overly opposed to scalping - yeah, sure it's a low way to make money, but then again so is selling used cars or being a lawyer :) The only people who need protection from scalpers are the "fans" and whilst this is true, I can think of many other areas of life where the little guy needs protection and doesn't get it. Tough business, life.

I would LOVE to see them try and enforce that at the gate.

All 3 U2 shows were supposed to have baggage checks etc, etc for cameras and recording devices. I didn't get checked once. Try slowing down 70,000 people hell bent on seeing their favourite band. It ain't gonna happen.

I'd heard somewhere that the reason was they'd printed on the ticket that if it was purchased by means other than official sellers it "would be cancelled". Other promoters use the word "may be cancelled". This meant to follow their own rules the BDO had to trace all tickets sold illegally and cancel them all, they couldn't just do it to the ones they found out about. This was proven to be impossible to trace all illegal tickets, so their case didn't stand up in court.

Funnily enough I don't have a problem with Scalpers...

Case in point, the recent U2 concerts.

I wasn't in a posisition to be able to camp overnight to buy tickets, I love the band, but circumstances in my life meant that this was not possible when the tickets were onsale.

I did manaage to get tickets off a friend 1 seat on Saturday night - General Admission, and I was able to tickets for the last night also.

However, for the Saturday night, I purchased a second GA ticket, so I could take a friend of mine along, at a price higher then the retail.

Personally, I had no problem with paying an extra $100 for the ticket, as I would have lost signifigantly more than this by missing work.

It just seems like common sense to me, if you are unable, or don't want to camp overnight to get tickets to a concert, that why not have the option to pay slightly more to get tickets?

Hmm, if you want to pay more knock yourself out. But, what about my option to pay the normal price for the ticket, which i now can't do, cause your scalper just bought them all.

You're ok with paying more off a scalper, but, by definition, that means other fans wanting to pay the normal priced are screwed (no tickets left) cause you don't want to line up. That doesn't make common sense to me.

If they didn't buy up 20 tickets at a time (and sell them for 100 bucks ontop of the price), then there'd be 20 more normal priced tickets available at the outlets.

No scalpers = more tickets freely available, perhaps even on the day after they went on sale.

I'm not happy to pay more for a ticket from a scalper because i was working when they went on sale, f@#$ that. I want to make a reasonable effort to get them quick as we all do, and i want there to be tickets available, which there would be more of, if there were no scalpers.

Scalper Tautology

The economists will tell you that its classic supply and demand, and that the market therefore sets the price. The only real answer here is to increase supply, ie have more concerts! Wherever there are more punters than there are tickets, there will always be scalping, be it overt or otherwise, and any attempt to control it is just a prohibitionist's pipedream. I wish the world didn't work that way, but it does, and we're all old enough to know it.

Sigh, it must be all those Christmas carols driving me into depressive cynacism. Forgive me folks, Christmas is supposed to be about hope and joy. Have a Merry one, and a safe sonically pleasing New Year.

I was thinking the same thing, Chris P, except about the Christmas stuff, managed to avoid it all so far :)

Here is the difference,

In your scenario the scalper purchased 20 tickets, where as for the U2 shows the maximum ticket allocation was four per person.

Whilst I agree that in an ideal world, I could just wander up to ticketek during my lunch break and buy tickts, which is actually what I did for the Monday Night show, for any major event/concert it is always basically a given that unless you camp out, you will not get a ticket.

I despise the profesisonal scalpers who buy tickets in bulk, and then charge thousands of dollars for them, but if some kid at Uni wants to camp out for four tickets, and sell me two of them for a premium so that he can afford to go too, then I say good luck to him.

Funnily enough in all of this, no body ever seems to mention the big credit card companies who all buy thousands of tickets, before even the scalpers have access to them, and sell them to their members.

Sure the tickets are at retail, but what about the several thousands of dollars (in some cases) that the clients have to pay out in yearly "membership" fees. That seems more like scalping to me...

Buy em on credit card as some credit card companies reserve tickets for thier customers for big events

Heath

Actually I would have liked to see U2 but after Bono's outburst about Aussie's not giving enough to poor countries I just thought this guy is wak and a hypocrite, I mean he could give away all his moolah, keep a Mill or 2 to sit on , who needs more than that? Seriously. I used to respect Bono but now I think he is just a big talker, too much publicity and not enouigh upstairs. Also thier new album , "How to dismantle blah blah", sounds like crap compared to 99% of thier other stuff, it's way tooo loud, squished, limited, distorted, just my opinion.

So was it a good show or what? How was the sound?

Firstly, How did it sound?

Well there is a whole topic on this, but to summarise...

The Sound in the ellipse/Front of Stage was spectacular

The Sound in the seated are not so good - delay stacks were not secured
properly, which meant that they were blowing in the wind, and subsequently moving in and out of phase with the main system speakers.

Monday Night show was also louder than Sat night, which didn't help.

Regardless it was still a great gig.

Secondly, in regard to your comments about buying with a CC.

I actually raised the ability to buy "reserved" tickets in my earlier post and also raised the question - What is the difference between buying tickets at an increased rate from a scalper, and buying them at a increased rate ( through yearly "membership" fees ) from a financial institution?

I also raised the question of whether or not their is a moral/ethical difference between the commercial organisation making very large purchases of tickets for large gross profit, and somebody buying an extra ticket or two, to help offset their costs/inconvience.

Thirdly, You raise the issue that you didn't like Bono's outburst about Australians not giving enough money to overseas.

Whilst this forum is not a political arena since you have raised the issue, I will respond briefly. In short, Australian's don't give enough money Overseas.

More than 1 billion people around the world live on less than $1 a day.

A child dies every three seconds from AIDS and extreme poverty.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to over 70% of the total world HIV-
positive population.

Over one billion people do not have access to clean water.

While this is occouring, I have no issue having somebody suggest to me that maybe I could give up one of my Latte's a day, and save somebodys life. You are probably correct in your statement that Bono could save a lot of lives if he gave away all his money. But let's look at the numbers...

Bono could give say $100 million (total guess)

Alternatively Bono could invest that $100 million in getting some of
the 100 million people or so who are working full time in the world to
invest $150 per year ( missing 1 $3.00 coffee per week ) at a net
result of 15 billion per year, annually.

Maybe, just maybe, he could even try to convince some of the major
governments of the world to spend a few biilion there, a few billion
here and there, and really make a difference.

Fianlly, If you don't like the latest album, that is totally your perogative.

Sound in the seats at U2 wasn't great. (friday night)

Sound in the elipse was the best live mix I can recall (saturday) but Monday night was too loud, even at the front of the elipse you could hear it bouncing around the back walls.

As for the new album sounding squished, limited and distorted.... what album are you listening to????.... and compared to what????? If you say you have it on your iPod or in mp3 format I'm going to have to kick your ass.

Anyway... I don't like scalpers but they have helped me see some shows I otherwise would have missed. How dumb would you feel being the guy that paid $4,000 for TWO U2 tickets 2 hours after the first sale, only to find out 2 days later that there was a second show... and he was only in the A reserves almost 60-70 meteres from the stage and on the side!

So was it a good show? Staurday night proved why they are the biggest band in the world and why they can sell around 200,000 tickets to 3 shows. I was just blown away. The music was outstanding.

As for Bono supposedly ranting and your assumptions about his wealth and alleged lack of generosity... How would you (or I for that matter) have any clue about something like that? Sweeping generalisations like that are just plain ignorant.

[quote="Kris"]

As for Bono supposedly ranting and your assumptions about his wealth and alleged lack of generosity... How would you (or I for that matter) have any clue about something like that? Sweeping generalisations like that are just plain ignorant.[/quote]

Exactly my point, as to Bono's comments in the first place. In a perfect world there would be no ill's or misery, it's just not that easy to fix things by just giving handouts, full social structures must change in the more destabilised regions of the world, if any sound & harmonious social structure are to emerge.
When the Tsunami devastated many of the poorest places throughout Asia we did give a lot, maybe not enough, but we were straight in there. Anyway I'm not gonna let some guy try to make me feel bad for being lucky.
The amount spent on funding for finding cures for diseases is pitifull compared to what is really needed, agreed. Most things are easier said than done.

Did'nt mean to upset anyone,just thinking logically,sorta, i guess,maybe. Ahhh, I've probably got the sh#$'s because some goose is digging up the yard behind mine with an excavator, hammering through ancient 12 foot bedrock at about 3 inches an hour to put in a pool,to replace the 35 year old tree which shaded my yard and gave me privacy. Though the view I now have probably adds $70,000 to the value of my place, I really wish the tree was still there.


Ok lets stick to the music, my fault. OK I thought the album was full of great music, just a little too fatigueing to listen to loud. Nah I was'nt listening as mp3 and no Ipod either, I don't have one. I bought the CD the day it was in my local music store, there are flat tops all throughout the thing and it sounds busted, to me.
I think U2 already sounded big without having to try to push things to far and (artisticly) flat top half the record, in the mastering stage I presume. Would have sounded way better at a more conservative final level, in my opinion.

Sorry everyone, no more politics from me.

Heath

[quote="Kris"]
So was it a good show? Staurday night proved why they are the biggest band in the world and why they can sell around 200,000 tickets to 3 shows. I was just blown away. The music was outstanding.[/quote]


Mmmmmm, awesome, wish I was there, I reckon seeing them live would have been worthwhile.

Reviving an old thread on scalping...article in today's Rage about fans sabotaging eBay auctions my scalpers:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/fans- ... 97651.html

Hmmm. This is interesting.

While it seems almost noble the fact
remains that these people have entered into a legally binding contract to buy
these tickets for a million bucks. At the least they could be sued for damages
for loss of income.

hmmm...

this seems pretty simple to me, ban the sale of concert tickets on ebay. I'm no lawyer, but if scalping is synonymous with concert tickets, this is an easy way to prevent such BS from occuring. "Genuine" fans needing to get rid of tickets can still sell their tickets, albeit by other means, trading post, music mag adverts, and so on... the main problem is ebays reach as a common market place.

If ebay prohibits the sale of guns, as they are illegal and can cause death....im sure (obviously on a much lesser scale) the same train of thought can be used for scalping, on the grounds they are a "minor" injustice to honest fans.

maybe there's too much red tape in the western world's legal system to allow such common sense...maybe not..

True enough. The anonymity of the eBay system does tend to lend itself to a bit of sabotage.

But the trick for the scalper arises when they are trying to sell a ticket that is non-transferable - kinda makes it hard for them to legally contract to sell or enforce any contract of sale - therein lies the loophole.