The anxious waiting in front of an impersonal keyboard that contains all your digital vocabulary. The left hand, trembling, motionless for just a couple of hours, waiting for tickets to be available for your favorite artist's concert. The distribution server suddenly updates itself; the box that reads "buy the ticket "is just a click away. There is no time to express enthusiasm: the feverish finger has already clicked on the purchase. But what happens? Sold out!? How is it possible? The answer has two words, and it is an international case: Secondary ticketing.
What is Secondary Ticketing?
It is nothing more than an online trading system in which concert tickets or similar events of great importance are sold at a higher price than the one originally agreed. Reason for which, considerable percentages of listeners, will finally be forced to sustain considerable expenses in comparison to the due; or, in the most demotivating eventuality, to renounce the purchase of the Ticket.
The secondary ticketing phenomenon is also widespread in Italy. To shed light on this fact was the Guardia di Finanza, after having searched two well-known promoting offices for concerts, Live Nation and Vivo Concerti, whose trafficking was suspicious. As also reported byHandleafter that, the CEO of Live Nation Italia, Roberto De Luca, is investigated for fraud; and the former CEO of Vivo Concerti, Corrado Rizzotto.
How does Secondary Ticketing work?
Basically it consists of the same method of scalping. It differs only the place of activity: the network. The touts, delegated by the companies, use very sophisticated software, capable of suddenly purchasing an impressive quantity of coupons; applications that allow to circumvent control systems that should prevent the possibility of operating multiple transactions, on a site, at the same time.
Among the various bodies that manage the coupons market, Ticketone it is the one to which the most famous concert organizers in Italy have been addressing for decades. To this company, the promoters should hand over all the coupons to be sold on the internet. However, this is not always the case. It seems that many of these organizers, in the light of recent events, instead of delivering all the tickets to Ticketone, only gave a part of them. The rest was distributed to all secondary ticketing platforms; who would later resell the tickets purchased at a higher price.
The gain is intuitive. The organizer, through the promoters, buys coupons for the sale of tickets online, through already specified systems. These distribute the coupons: some at Ticketone, others at the secondary ticketing sites. The secondary ticketing sites, having received the coupons, are preparing to resell them to the public at a higher price. After having sold everything, the platforms of which he has made use of, will retain a fixed percentage; the rest will end up in the organizers' coffers.
The Measures
After countless complaints brought forward also by organizers not involved in the scandal, such as Claudio Trotta, founder of Barley Arts, the Italian government is also moving. The Renzi government in fact presented to the chamber, on 11 November, an amendment to the budget law, which embraces the fight against online touting.
