Who wouldn’t want to go and see Adele? Apparently the answer to that question is no one – since Adele tickets have gone crazy as of late. People are selling them for up to ten times their face value. Her new album “25” has become the fastest-selling UK album of all time and she is starting a 15 week concert tour in Britain, Ireland and Europe in February and March. Tickets cost between £35 and £95 and are limited to four tickets per person. People, however, are taking the tickets they have purchased and reselling them for far higher prices.
General ticket sales started on Friday, December 4th. On Adele’s website she states, “The resale of tickets will not be tolerated. We want to ensure that as many Adele.com members as possible have the opportunity to attend a performance, so any tickets suspected of being offered on resale marketplaces will be cancelled immediately.”
A spokesperson for Songkick, the company that is selling tickets to fans from Adele’s website said, “One of the great unsolved problems of live events is how to ensure tickets end up in the right hands. Over the last weeks, over 500,000 people registered at Adele.com in the hopes of securing tickets to her highly anticipated upcoming tour. Songkick provided the opportunity to allow fans to register, and to use its proprietary technology to identify touts, reduce their ability to purchase tickets when advance sales commenced on December 1 and to cancel as many tickets appearing on secondary ticketing sites as possible…This morning, Songkick sold 57,000 tickets to fans, with less than 2 per cent of these tickets making their way onto resale markets by mid afternoon. Compared to other events, we believe these efforts helped to reduce resale by well over 50 per cent, increasing the amount of fans that can attend these shows. Ultimately, artists’ goals of ensuring 100 per cent of tickets end up in the right hands will depend on a combination of both technology and legislative action.”