Lewis Capaldi tickets: Bogus briefs sold out of Ukraine

Tickets went on pre-sale on Wednesday and Thursday, with briefs immediately listed on resale sites such as Viagogo for hugely inflated prices.

Thanks to changes in UK law those must now be flagged as ‘trader’ tickets – essentially making clear they’re from touts.

However, resale sites pay big money to search engines to ensure they’re at the top of the results page and bring fans looking for tickets to their sites.

A search for ‘Lewis Capaldi tickets Hydro’ returns two paid adverts at the top of the Google rankings, one for Viagogo and one for a company called Gigsberg.

Companies pay to be at the top of Google's search results (Image: Newsquest)

On the latter site tickets with a face value of £60 were being sold for up to £152 each, plus a booking fee of close to £57, meaning fans could be shelling out £361 for two tickets – if the tickets even exist.

Many of the tickets listed for sale were being sold by a company called Top Notch services ltd (sic) with a registered address in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

A search on Google Maps appears to show the address given is the back of a supermarket.

Gigsberg's Limited Liability Company is based in Switzerland, while Gigsberg Services OU is registered in Estonia.

The company says that all tickets are "guaranteed and secure". It did not respond when approached for comment on the tickets being sold from Kharkiv.

Lewis Capaldi tickets on sale from a company based in Ukraine (Image: Newsquest)

On Viagogo floor section tickets were going for up to £315 for a single ticket, the majority from touts.

Adam Webb, of the campaign group Fan Fair Alliance explains: “To some degree Viagogo is a bit of an optical illusion because it looks like the tree is full of leaves whereas actually it’s a bit of a manky old bush, there aren’t actually that many (real) tickets on there.

“Also, because Google allow them to buy their way to the top of search rankings a lot of people will still click on Viagogo not knowing what it is and thinking it’s the actual seller of tickets.

“There are measures artists can take to try and prevent the ticket touts who operate on Viagogo getting hold of those tickets in the first place.

“The artists with big, high demand shows have got to make sure that they’ve got those terms and conditions in place and that they’re making use of them.”

Tickets for US emo band Paramore, who play the Hydro next year, also go on general sale on Friday, and have included more strict terms and conditions than have been posted for Capaldi's shows.

They state “any tickets purchased by business or traders in breach of the T&Cs of Ticket Sale will be cancelled” and that “ticket resale is permitted at no more than the price you paid”.

That hasn’t prevented dozens of tickets being posted on Viagogo - the top search result on Google - for up to £240, the majority listed by traders. Under the rules the promoters have put in place, anyone paying such prices could see their tickets, even if they’re legitimate, cancelled.

One trader, posting tickets they claim to have for £105, was known only as Kwik with the address registered at an office building in Edinburgh. No such company is listed on the Capital Business Centre website though it does state that the list is 'some' of their clients.

Another, listing tickets for £115 each, is listed by Viagogo as AEY Events International, registered to a PO Box in London. A company called AEY International - no 'Events' - was incorporated on January 6 2017 but struck off on June 11 2019. It had assets of £455 on its 2018 accounts.

AEY Events - no 'International' - appears on Facebook but hasn't posted since January 2018. It's not known if either bears any relation to the seller listed on Viagogo.

A Viagogo spokesperson said: "At viagogo we want fans to have the options and flexibility they deserve for buying and selling tickets to live events. Given the buzz around Paramore's recently announced tour, the high demand is not a surprise and once the initial excitement settles, so too will the market.

"The listing prices are not necessarily an indication of what a fan will spend, and we encourage buyers to know what value they put on being at the live show and monitor our marketplace for something that suits their budget.

"Any actions taken by event organisers to restrict purchasing and resale ultimately harms fans by limiting their choice, flexibility, and access.”

Gigsberg is not one of the top search results for the Paramore show but is listing a single floor ticket for £400, rising to £501 once booking fees and delivery fee are included. The seller? Top Notch services ltd, Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Gigsberg did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr Webb says: “I think Paramore are doing everything right in the sense they’re saying the tickets are for sale to consumers only, and that they’ll cancel tickets that are being bought by businesses.

“They’re offering fans a resale service so if you genuinely want to resell you can sell it for the price you paid.

“The thing that’s still really frustrating is the role of Google.

“A lot of people start the ticket buying process on Google, they’ll put ‘Paramore tickets’, they see the first thing at the top, don’t know it’s an advert and they trust Google. They shouldn’t, but they do.

"Google could do a lot more when tickets go on sale to direct people toward legitimate sales of tickets whereas at the moment the signposts are pointing the other way, and I do think that’s a fundamental part of this as well.

“Google could be on the side of the angels here and really help sell a lot of tickets, and they could be helping their own users find what they’re looking for: which is sort of the whole point of a search engine if you ask me.

“Whereas instead they’re allowing rogue companies to change the signposts around and point people in the other direction and I think that’s morally, ethically and commercially completely wrong.

“So I think that would be a massive help if they got on board and actually supported live music."

Some have gone even further in trying to clamp down on touting, including attendees having to attend with the person who bought the ticket, even if the person in question is not going to the show.

Mr Webb says: “Ed Sheeran is the classic example, there was no ticket touting on his last tour. One of the biggest artists in the world can play massive shows in the UK without any ticket touting, just setting a face value price.

“When Ed goes and plays America it’ll be really, really challenging to do that because he won’t have the same controls.

“Obviously not everyone has Ed Sheeran’s resources but it is possible for other artists to do likewise when they play here.”

The effect of the resale sites could be even more insidious when looking at Ticketmaster’s controversial ‘dynamic pricing’ scheme.

Commonplace in the US, it sees price rise with demand – with part of the ‘market price’ determined by what could be fetched on secondary selling websites.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson said: “market-based prices are informed by secondary market info and the prices that most fans are ultimately paying anyway”.

It’s been used in the UK for shows by Coldplay, Bruce Springsteen and Harry Styles, with the latter two both playing at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium next summer.

Some Springsteen tickets in the US sold for up to $5,000, though Ticketmaster stated that 88 per cent were sold for face value.

PA (Image: Manu Fernandez/PA)

But with the market flooded with fake briefs, prices could rise in line with tickets that never actually existed.

Mr Webb said: “In the UK you can do stuff to prevent the touting taking place in the first place so you can stop that artificial secondary market – or do a lot to prevent it – therefore you don’t have that justification to dynamically price.

“My worry is that there will be too much of an incentive to do nothing about touting because it’s going to then justify inflating the price in primary.

“Even more ludicrous is if those tickets haven’t even been purchased – why on earth are you using that as a benchmark for your pricing?

“For festivals the vast majority of tickets on Viagogo are phantom tickets, they don’t exist. But you could be using those prices to price your tickets in primary. It’s ludicrous.

“It’s ludicrous to look at the secondary market as a benchmark, because it’s not a market that you can trust.

“I’ve got nothing against dynamic pricing as a thing, it can work in other markets I just don’t think it works in ticketing. And it certainly doesn’t work in the UK in the way it theoretically could work in the US, and we definitely do not want to go down the route of how ticketing works in the US because it’s out of control, the prices are spiralling and everyone acts like there’s some invisible hand deciding all of this, acting like there’s no human involvement in it.

“Over here has shown with the right laws in place, and the right regulations, it should be possible for the artist and the promoter to rein back control, set the prices they see fit, get the tickets to the fans, enable the fans to resell tickets and hopefully stop the touts getting them.”

It's not just secondary selling that can be a headache for fans though.

Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino said after the company published its Q4 results for 2021 that ticket prices for 'top 10 tours' were up more than 20 per cent on pre-pandemic levels.

The company, which owns Ticketmaster, promoted more than 17,000 concerts for 35 million fans around the world in 2021, generating £273.8m in Q4 revenue.

According to market and consumer data company Statista the live music scene in the UK is worth around $1.48bn in revenue per year and live sports $1.78bn, with those numbers expected to rise to $2.33bn and $2.07bn respectively by 2027.

The average revenue per customer in the live music space is expected to increase from $84.06 in 2017 to $152.40 by 2027 – an increase of 81 per cent.

A 2018 BBC report found that ticket prices had doubled since 1999, up 27 per cent with inflation taken into account.

In the US a campaign is growing to undo a 2010 merger between Ticketmaster and the concert promoter Live Nation - forming LNE - which gives, activists say, the two brands’ parent company a 70 per cent monopoly on ticket sales.

Similar concerns could apply in Scotland.

Both Paramore and Lewis Capaldi’s Hydro shows are being presented by DF Concerts, the music and events promoter. Ticketmaster and DF share a parent company – Live Nation Entertainment.

Also under the LNE banner are the Academy Music Group, who own or manage more than 20 venues across the UK including the 02 Academy Glasgow and 02 Academy Edinburgh.

That means if you were to buy three tickets to see Carly Rae Jepsen at Glasgow’s 02 Academy in February next year you’d pay £91.70: £25 per ticket, £13.95 in service fees and facility charges and a £2.75 handling fee.

Carly Rae Jepsen (Image: Universal)

The show is being put on by DF Concerts, at a venue owned by the Academy Music Group, with tickets sold through Ticketmaster, Ticketweb (a division of Ticketmaster) and Gigs In Scotland (operated by DF Concerts).

While Fan Fair Alliance is focused on ticket touting, Mr Webb agreed there could be issues with the way the market works.

He said: "I think you’re absolutely right to raise those issues. I believe an artist should have a lot of choice in terms of it’s their fanbase, everyone is conscious at the moment that people don’t have much money.

“This is where it all gets a bit difficult. When FanFair started, Ticketmaster had two resale sites (Seatwave and GetMeIn) which allowed touts to sell tickets, which gave them a massive competitive advantage. They were the only site to allow ticket touting to take place.

“So they’ve closed those sites and they’ve now joined the rest of the industry, and all the big ticket companies now support capped resale, the venues support it. So everyone’s on that line and that’s what I think everyone should be growing.

“We’ve got this far better resale market, which doesn’t involve rogue websites like Viagogo. Everyone should be provided with this service and just make it easy for a fan, if they can’t go to a show – particularly after a pandemic – to re-sell the ticket. That’s a far better solution.

“Markets work on incentives and my fear coming out of Covid is that before everything was moving in the right direction. My fear is that afterward there’ll be such a desperation to sell tickets that people don’t focus on things like that.

“Then, like you say, if it’s held up as ‘ticket touting is this problem we can’t do anything about and actually we’re under-pricing our tickets’ because there’s this non-existent ticket on Viagogo that’s three times the price, therefore that justifies inflating ticket prices. I think that’s an absolute nonsense.

“If you want to increase your ticket price then that’s absolutely down to the artist, if an artist wants to charge people thousands of pounds to go and see them that’s their choice.

“But I think to hide behind demand or market-based pricing, I don’t subscribe to that at all.

“It should be down to the artist and the promoter to work out the pricing structure.

“But I totally get where you are with the construction of the market. Not many people probably realise, I don’t think, that when an artist plays most venues they don’t really have a choice about who tickets the event because obviously most of the bigger venues have already got an arrangement with a ticket company and a lot of venues are part-owned by the bigger promoters as well.

“So the freedom that artists have in their recording career - and there’s a lot more freedom now than there used to be before streaming and so on - that doesn’t exist in live music anymore. They’re far more constrained.

“It’s very difficult to tour the UK, and very difficult if not impossible to tour the USA, without using certain companies."