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14th March 2017
03:49pm GMT
We've all been there.
After waiting what seems like YEARS, your favourite act finally announces an Irish gig.
The morning that that tickets go on sale, you're poised and ready with Ticketmaster open on your laptop and mobile, your finger hovering over the refresh button and more adrenaline running through your veins that Usain Bolt ahead of a 100m sprint.
FINALLY, it's 9am. The tickets go live and you wait, every part of your body clenched, as the spinning wheel searches for your order and tells you to 'sit tight'.
You wait.
And you wait.
And you wait some more, your hopes and dreams fading as the clock ticks on.
Eventually, Ticketmaster puts you out of your misery with the dreaded message 'Sorry, no tickets match your search'.
Most of us have been unfortunate enough to endure this crushing disappointment at some stage of our lives and while it's annoying enough to miss out to other fans, the reality that your tickets have instead gone to touts is enough to send anyone into an incandescent rage.
Take last Friday, for example.
Tickets for Eddie Vedder's upcoming date at the 3 Arena went on sale at 9am. As a long-time fan, I dutifully went through the motions of trying to get a ticket but, surprise surprise, they sold out in minutes.
I logged on to secondary ticket seller Seatwave's website at 9.20am and there were already 53 tickets on sale – with the cheapest priced at €200 (the most expensive at the moment is €650) .
They were priced between €60 and €90 originally.
The kicker? Ticketmaster also owns Seatwave and adds a €40 booking fee to the already inflated price of the tickets.
And the situation on other secondary
sites is even worse.
#Ticketmaster sold out of standing tickets for #u2Dublin... but seatwave already advertising them for €249. Wow.
— Ciara O'Brien (@ciaraobrien) January 16, 2017
Dublin sells out in 6 mins @U2 1 hr ltr 1 pitch standing tkt on sale for €1k on @Ticketmaster partner tout site #U2TheJoshuaTree2017 #joke
— Richie McCann (@richie_mccann) January 16, 2017
The sad thing is that I wasn't even surprised. This is standard practice now for any popular concert, forcing genuine fans to pay 3x the price of a ticket or camp out in the street to be in with a chance of being able to attend.
There are tickets to see U2 at Croke Park selling for €1,000 on StubHub at the moment, a lower tier ticket to see Ed Sheeran at the 3 Arena next month is on Viagogo for €1,147, and a ticket to see Radiohead at 3 Arena in June could set you back €600 on NeedATicket.ie.
Absolute madness.
While Fine Gael's Noel Rock and Fianna Fáil's Stephen Donnelly are about to put forward a motion to make touting illegal in Ireland, there has been little political appetite to address the issue in the past.
Calls for similar legislation back in 1998 and 2005 failed to receive enough support in the corridors of power and a very telling story recently published by The Sunday Times could explain why.
The newspaper claimed that IDA Ireland advised the Government that introducing legislation to make touting illegal could have a negative impact on companies like Viagogo and Stubhub, who both have offices in Ireland.
Viagogo, for example, employs 200 people at its Limerick site and the investment agency "expressed concern" that "restrictive provisions on ticket resale would send a negative signal to these businesses and adversely affect efforts to attract other businesses in the sector to Ireland".
Disgusted @edsheeran tickets for Dublin snapped up by touts & resold on @viagogo for €800! Absolute disgrace!! #shouldbeillegal #edsheeran
— Juliana (@jula81) January 31, 2017
furious,tried getting tickets for for 10yo son for @edsheeran in Dublin,sold out,minutes later viagogo had lots between €4-800,fucking joke
— TheTrikingViking (@dermotsshaw) February 2, 2017
Rock recently told Hot Press that his bill has the support of Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, raising some hope that a resolution could be on the horizon.
However, given that this is far from a new issue and the Government's dire track record so far, you'll forgive us if we're not counting our chickens.
In the meantime? It looks like I'll be pitching up outside St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre for a few hours this Thursday morning to make sure I don't miss out again.
The joys of modern technology, eh?
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