Dealing with touts

Heard a story at the weekend of a novel way in policing touts that begged the question, 'why hasn't it been done before?'.

A brother of a friend chanced his arm on dropping up to Croker after coming home from holidays,to see was there any hint of a ticket for U2 at a reasonable price. As luck turned out he got a freebie, after the cops supposedly took them off known touts and handed them to people who had turned up in the hope of getting one.

Did anybody read or hear anything similar? Sounds good to me, and appears to be a method that could be easily implemented with a few undercover cops and willing help from the public to pinpoint known touts. It does sound too good to be true, but surely it can be pulled off regularly in a similar fashion?

I'm open to correction but i do not think touting is illegal. There may be restrictions around area of sports venues.

If concert promoters did not too easily sell 6 tickets per person might discourage touting but they don't care. Is sell tickets on ebay at inflated prices any different than touting on the street?

Why is there something wrong with someone queueing up for tickets & then sell at premium to compensate for their time?

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Originally Posted by pete

I'm open to correction but i do not think touting is illegal.

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It's not but street trading without a license is. The guardí can confiscate your merchandise as evidence and you can get it back after the court case.

In reality there's never a court case as the tickets are useless after the event.

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Originally Posted by pete

Why is there something wrong with someone queueing up for tickets & then sell at premium to compensate for their time?

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But these days you don't have to queue up as it's all internet sales. Actually having it queing up would discourage touts, as would a 2 per person restriction on tickets.

In Manchester for U2 they held tickets back for the day - touts apparently trying to sell their stacks of tickets half price :D

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A brother of a friend chanced his arm on dropping up to Croker after coming home from holidays,to see was there any hint of a ticket for U2 at a reasonable price. As luck turned out he got a freebie, after the cops supposedly took them off known touts and handed them to people who had turned up in the hope of getting one.

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aye, the cops up around croker always have tickets. at the dubs v meath game i went up to a cop just outside quinns , was trying to get a ticket for me mate who had gone searching, he had about 10, was giving me a lower cusack ticket for free which would normally cost é27. funy thing was me mate had just bought one :o

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Originally Posted by paul_oshea

aye, the cops up around croker always have tickets. at the dubs v meath game i went up to a cop just outside quinns , was trying to get a ticket for me mate who had gone searching, he had about 10, was giving me a lower cusack ticket for free which would normally cost é27. funy thing was me mate had just bought one :o

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Yeah Paul - I've seen this happen in Thurles a few times. Both outside the stadium and in the town square. Proper order I say. Hate touts.

Brilliant way to to do it. Hate touts. Got one over on a tout at Christmas by stopping a fella paying £50 for a Pogues ticket, by giving him a spare I had been given for free. Made his night, and the tout was bulling. Got a mouthfull of abuse over it, but it was worth it. :D I hope they carry on stopping touts outside the grounds :D

Strange thing is, I was chuffed to see touts outside an eircom League ground when Bohs played Rosenborg.
It gave a certain status to the game.
Sorry! :o

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Originally Posted by Peadar

Strange thing is, I was chuffed to see touts outside an eircom League ground when Bohs played Rosenborg.
It gave a certain status to the game.
Sorry! :o

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In fairness Pa, touts would gather at a cinema if there was a demand for tickets. I wonder have touts ever had reason to do business at any eircom league games or cup games?

i would have given mine away for that game if i had known there were true fans without...though i doubt that. i remember queuing 2 hours for those bohs tickets

Sports organisations can discourage touting by tracking the tickets. Most tickets are issued to named person or clubs. The major sports bodies should have people buying tickets from touts on matchday & then tracing the original receiver & then ban that person from getting tickets in future - if fans didn't sell to touts where would touts get tickets?

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Originally Posted by pete

..if fans didn't sell to touts where would touts get tickets?

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Ticketmaster :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Student Mullet

It's not but street trading without a license is. The guardí can confiscate your merchandise as evidence and you can get it back after the court case.

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As well as that the terms and conditions for the ticket nearly always say that they may not be resold. That's a civil condition, but all the management company has to do it give permission to the Gardaí to redistribute them for free and bob's your uncle. Course I don't know the details in practice, but I'm pretty sure the Gardaí have looked into the legality of what they're doing.

It seems like a good idea on the face of it, but I'm not sure why people that were going to contribute to illegality should be rewarded. Me, I'd take the tickets off them too, and burn them in front of their face. They're part of the problem, since of course if nobody bought off touts, there wouldn't be any.

adam

When I lived in Oz I was queing up for tickets for the Ireland matches during
the rugby World Cup and the ticketmaster shop in Bondi opened, let about 5
people in then stuck up a "All Tickets Sold Out" notice.
Not that big into rugby but it was a kick in the nuts having to queue up and then see that.

Ended up getting a ticket for the Romania game off a girl I met in a pub the
night before the game, got the Argentina ticket off a tout, Namibia off a mates
mate and the Australia game from the ticket office at the stadium the morning
of the match. Just went up on the off chance and got 1 no hassle even though
touts were around the city flogging them for 3-4 times the price!

Touts = Scum of the Earth.

One sunny sunday in thurles a few years ago I was queueing at the turnstiles to enter the ground. There was a guy a few places ahead of me in the queue shouting out that he had a spare ticket. Another guy approached him and said he needed a ticket. Out of sheer generosity and sportsmanship the guy gave him the ticket for free and said enjoy the game. I watched the guy who got the ticket for a few mins. The fcuker went down the road a bit and sold the ticket. I'll never forget it. I was livid. Touting at all ticket events needs to be addressed. Big time.

I've bought loads of tickets over the internet at inflated prices ($210 for a $55 ticket is the most inflated). Is that any different to touts?

I'm not sure if there's anything in the terms and conditions about it either. Here in the states, eBay doesn't let you sell tickets more than face value if your address is in certain states. There are obviously ways around this, but if it was illegal in Ireland, then surely eBay would have similar warnings about Eire.

It's basic economics lads. If you have something, you are entitled to sell it. And when there is a greater demand for it, then people will sell it for more.