Adele tickets selling for upwards of £24,000 on resale websites
The 25 singer had attempted to stop touts buying tickets
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Your support makes all the difference.If you were one of the few who managed to get a ticket to Adele’s upcoming tour, count yourself lucky as millions of fans were left empty-handed.
While the 25 singer may have attempted to crack down on touts purchasing tickets, there were still a couple that got through to resellers who are now pawning them off for up to 290 times the original value.
Some tickets have been selling on Ticketmaster’s resale site Get Me In for as much as £22,000 (£24,800 including fees), the face value being £85. StubHub, a rival site, also had tickets selling for up to £23,600 each, including fees. Seatwave and Viagogo were also selling tickets on for extremely inflated prices.
Adele was keen not to allow touts to buy up tickets to her 20 date UK Arena tour run, her management teaming up with Song Kick in order to exclude 18,000 known or likely touts from purchasing tickets.
The only website sanctioned by the singer’s team is Twickets, where fans may exchange tickets but never for more than face value.
In a statement, Ticketmaster defended themselves, saying: “Ticketing marketplaces react to demand and the willingness of fans to pay. With high-profile events, such as Adele, tickets are sometimes listed at prices higher than the face value. Tickets very rarely sell at these elevated prices though, with many selling at face value or below the original price.”
The company issues out a similar statement when tickets to Harry Potter and The Cursed Child - the stage adaptation of the wizarding world - were selling for over £2,000.
Speaking to The Observer, Labour MP Sharon Hodgson, co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, said: “It is dismaying to find that tickets to Adele’s hotly anticipated tour are now being resold at significantly marked-up prices on secondary ticketing platforms.
“While artists and their management can have all the best intentions in mind to end the profiteering by ticket touts on their events, what we need is the legislation in place that supports artists in doing this.”
Artists to have previously spoken out against touting include Elton John, Prince and Glastonbury headliners Coldplay.
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