2023-08-02 17:38:35
The ‘secondary ticketing’, i.e. the resale of tickets purchased and immediately sold out for major sporting or musical events, has been brought back to the forefront of the news and social protests in recent days by the race for tickets for the Coldplay concert in Rome next year, a race ended just after it started, “it’s a very difficult phenomenon to counter, also because what was once the traditional ‘scaling’ has now moved online”, says Carlo Parodi, president of AssoMusica, interviewed by time.news.
“It is a phenomenon that we have known for several years now, only temporarily cushioned by the Covid crisis. What is certain is that the new regulations created as a law enforcement action have served no purpose, the evidence is there for all to see – he observes Parodi – The nominal value on the concert ticket failed to mitigate the phenomenon, instead causing an increase in costs and long queues for public access”.
For Parodi, “the activities of the supervisory authorities must continue and indeed increase, above all with adequate technological tools, because as soon as one lowers one’s guard the phenomenon re-emerges stronger than before, with consequent damage to the image if not to revenues; but in the medium term, the raising of an entry barrier to the purchase of tickets for a concert could also create disaffection on the part of the public, induced to think that the real prices are in fact much higher than those indicated and therefore inaccessible to most, for don’t talk about the risk of fake tickets”.
After all, recalls the president of AssoMusica, “the interests at stake are really very important. And they concern large organisations, not the single nerd who wants to play the trick on the price of the tickets purchased with his home computer, perhaps to pay for his holidays with this little speculation… Here we are faced with organizations structured to make large profits from this illegal practice in Italy and in Europe, even if it is tolerated in the USA”.
Secondary ticketing, recently highlighted by the pre-sales for Coldplay’s concert in Rome, is a cyclical problem, which recurs in waves in parallel with the partial offer of tickets and which certainly needs to be regulated, managed and controlled, establishing the level beyond which speculation is triggered; but that shouldn’t be demonized, because at least it demonstrates the excellent state of health that the world of live music lives, in any case linked to the record industry and success in the sale of records, without which not even tours would have been successful”. what Sergio Cerruti, president of Afi, the Italian Phonographic Association, recommends when interviewed by time.news.
For Cerruti, “in any case, the illegal resale of tickets, in addition to being a worldwide phenomenon, does not only concern concerts; just think of the finals of football matches or other major sporting events such as the Olympics. In music, perhaps it is more sensation, rightly creating quite a few stomach aches in the public, being a good that wants to be within everyone’s reach”.
Rather, he proposes, “this sort of non-transparent lottery linked to waiting lists should be abolished, I am thinking of TicketOne: the platform must not also manage and create the A or B series of customers included in the ticket purchase lists : what are the admission criteria, perhaps written in microscopic type in the last few lines that no one reads?” asks the president of Afi.
(by Enzo Bonaiuto)
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