Features
Ticketmaster Closes Secondary Sites Get Me In! And Seatwave Across Europe
– Ticketmaster.co.uk
The Live Nation company has shut down its resale offerings Get Me In! and Seatwave with immediate effect
Ticketmaster UK has shut down its ticket resale sites Get Me In! and Seatwave across Europe effective today, Aug. 13.
“From today, there will be no new events listed on Get Me In! or Seatwave,” Ticketmaster UK has announced.
“That’s right, we’ve listened and we hear you: secondary sites just don’t cut it anymore and you’re tired of seeing others snap up tickets just to resell for a profit,” the statement continues.
The company is going to roll out a new fan-to-fan ticket exchange in the UK and Ireland in October, followed by a European roll-out early next year.
Through that new resale offering, fans can buy and sell tickets at face value or less, according to the announcement.
According to Andrew Parsons, managing director of Ticketmaster UK, “our number one priority is to get tickets into the hands of fans so that they can go to the events they love. We know that fans are tired of seeing tickets being snapped up just to find them being resold for a profit on secondary websites, so we have taken action.
“Closing down our secondary sites and creating a ticket exchange on Ticketmaster has always been our long-term plan. We’re excited to launch our redesigned website which will make buying and selling tickets fast and simple, with all tickets in the same place.
“Our new Ticketmaster ticket exchange lets fans sell tickets they can’t use directly through their Ticketmaster account, for the price originally paid or less.
“Selling tickets through Ticketmaster is really simple: we do all the hard work and outline the maximum that can be charged for the ticket – and it doesn’t cost fans a penny to sell them.”
The UK’s FanFair Alliance, which has been fighting against for-profit ticket resale for years, is happy to see a “genuine transformation of the secondary market.”
A statement from the alliance reads: “After a long campaign to change the UK ticketing market and to put power into the hands of artists and their fans, the Fanfair Alliance warmly welcomes this move by Ticketmaster.
“While enforcement action is still urgently required to clamp down on rogue operators such as Viagogo, we are now much closer to a genuine transformation of the secondary market – where large-scale online touts are locked out, where innovation can flourish, and the resale of tickets is made straightforward, transparent and consumer-friendly. We look forward to the roll out from October this year and seeing how these changes work in practice.”