Fans who are eager to see popular artists often face the misery of paying way over the odds for tickets on resale sites that allow touts to cash in
But one company has found a way to beat the touts with a hack that allows fans to purchase tickets at face value - even for sold out events - that can't be sold for a higher value.
Music app DICE provides waitlist, refunds and tout proof tickets for hugely popular artists, such as Sam Smith to Stormzy, and has just launched a new feature that allows fans to buy last-minute club entry and tickets for late night gigs.
Managing directon Russ Tannen told Femail: 'DICE is a primary ticket outlet, that means we work directly with the event organisers, artists and venues to sell their tickets on their behalf.
'Every penny you spend on stays in the music industry. Tickets are locked into the app, and can’t be resold.
'If an event is sold out, you can return your ticket to our "Waiting List" and get your money back. Then a fan who can make it gets to go.
Russ Tannen is the managing director of DICE, an app that allows fans to buy tickets for gigs at face value even if the event is sold out. The tickets remain locked in the app so they can't be sold on for a higher price
'We have an internal motto, "our only customer is the fan". That might seem obvious, but lots of companies in our space seem to be set up to serve everyone other than the fan.
'Before we launched we figured that there would be 100 companies like ours about to be unveiled, but here we are four years later, still in our own lane.'
Russ started his career in the music industry promoting gigs on the Isle of Wight when he was 15 years old.
'I wasn’t old enough to get in the venue so I would watch the bands sound check and then wait in the carpark until the end of the night, pay them, and go home.
DICE works by selling tickets direct from artists and venues and has launched a new nightlife feature for club and late-night gig entry
Since then I’ve DJ’d, photograph’d, TV presented, ran venues for Vice, and eventually teamed up with Phil Hutcheon, the founder and CEO of DICE, managing artists.
It was managing artists that made the need for DICE so apparent. We were asking ourselves why ticketing sucked so much for our artists and for their fans.
'Who do you know who hasn’t had a terrible experience buying tickets for something? We wanted to fix that with an incredible user experience on mobile.
'We wanted to stop tickets being sold on the secondary market. And we wanted to get people out more.'
Viagogo charges woman £3,000 for two £87 tickets to take dying father on a bucket list trip to the Last Night of the Proms
Viagogo was last night described as ‘worse than a street tout’ after a woman hoping to take her terminally ill father to the BBC Proms was sold tickets for 17 times their face value.
Hannah Maturin, 30, wanted to take frail John to see the Last Night of the Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Saturday as part of a series of ‘bucket list’ trips planned for his final months.
She saved and bought two tickets for £2,959 from Viagogo in April, believing the site to be a genuine retailer because it appeared first following a Google search.
In fact, Viagogo is a secondary reselling ‘marketplace’ which allows users to set prices wildly in excess of face value. When the tickets failed to arrive days before the event she contacted Viagogo, which first argued that they may simply be late – before finally admitting the seller had not provided any.
Hannah Maturin, 30, wanted to take her frail father John to see the Last Night of the Proms
Viagogo provided two ‘replacement’ tickets on Friday, with a face value of £87 each, which were initially rejected by Miss Maturin as the Royal Albert Hall insisted those with resold tickets would be turned away.
She instead requested a refund but was refused. The accounts manager finally attended the event with her partner instead – as she feared the resold tickets would mean her father, who is in a wheelchair, would be denied entry. Former aviation engineer Mr Maturin, 74, suffers from kidney cancer which has spread to his bones and lungs.
Meanwhile, Viagogo has also refused to refund the £2,785 difference between the face value of the tickets and the price charged.
Hannah bought two tickets from Viagogo for £2,959 despite them being worth just £174
The firm takes a cut of every transaction and is being taken to court by the Competition and Markets Authority over alleged breaches of consumer law such as the hugely inflated price paid by Miss Maturin. Last week, Viagogo was described by the chairman of the culture select committee last week as ‘not a reputable company’ when representatives refused to attend a Commons hearing.
Conservative MP Damian Collins said that he believed it was because the firm was ‘concerned about incriminating themselves’. Singer Ed Sheeran’s promoter Stuart Galbraith also told the hearing that Viagogo is the ticketing industry’s last ‘major boil left to lance’.
The process works by selling tickets directly from the venue or artist to fans, and not allowing screenshots so that tickets can't be sold on.
'No DICE ticket has ever ended up on a secondary site,' Russ explained.
'We select the best venues, event organisers and artists to go onto DICE. We get in touch, or vice versa, and we set up the show.
'Then our system does something magic that alerts all the fans of the artist that the show is going on sale, and the right fans will see the event in their ‘Discovery’.
The app has also just launched a new Nite DICE feature that allows you to search what's on nearby and buy available tickets, all the way through the night.
Earlier this year a Daily Mail investigation revealed how people are being ripped off through resale sites such as Viagogo.
Customers have been charged hundreds of pounds more than they expected to pay for appearances by Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Paul Weller and a host of other big names.
Some resale sites use a tactic called 'drip pricing' — concealing the true cost of tickets by adding 'booking fees', delivery charges and VAT only at the last moment — just before customers press the 'Buy' button.
DICE prevents tickets being sold on the secondary market by keeping them locked into the app. They can be returned if not wanted but users can't gain access to an event with a screenshot, so it prevents tickets being resold by touts
Buyers are at that stage distracted by a 'timer' suggesting only seconds and minutes remain before scarce tickets are snapped up by other fans who, they are warned, are eyeing the tickets at that very moment.
As a result of pressure from the Adveritising Standards Authority, last week Viagogo agreed to end drip pricing and publish an upfront fee.
However, customers still face paying more than face value for tickets on resale sites where they are not buying direct from the venue or artist.
For more information visit nitedice.com
Link article
https://hienalouca.com/2018/09/10/how-fans-can-finally-beat-ticket-touts/
Main photo article Fans who are eager to see popular artists often face the misery of paying way over the odds for tickets on resale sites that allow touts to cash in
But one company has found a way to beat the touts with a hack that allows fans to purchase tickets at face value – even for sold out events ...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves Femail HienaLouca
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