Mumford & Sons (Photo: Gary Mather for Live4ever Media)
Mumford & Sons have issued a plea to fans to help them curb touts after claiming around 6,000 tickets for the recent UK tour found their way onto secondary sites.
“We’ve worked so hard over the years to keep our ticket prices reasonable – we want all of our fans to be able to come to our shows,” the band say in a long statement.
“We’ve also done everything we can to keep our tickets from finding their way on to re-selling sites. Many tickets on secondary sites are being sold by touts who are simply in the business of ripping off the fan by charging an extortionate amount for sold out shows.”
“The activities of these touts are very sophisticated: they hire coders to try to break the software of the ticket companies that we hand-pick to sell our tickets in the first place (primary Ticket sellers); they use multiple identities to buy several batches of tickets from the same ticket seller; and (contravening UK law) they pose as individual consumers when they list tickets on these services with no mention of seat number or row, when actually they’re businesses with no intention of going to the shows buying tickets in bulk to sell on.”
“It’s our hope that secondary ticketing companies root this out to stop it happening on their sites, and that they shut it down.”
The band members are appealing to fans to report any negative experiences with secondary selling sites to the UK’s Department of Culture, Music and Sport as Professor Waterson conducts an independent parliamentary review into the issue of secondary ticketing.