TICKET touts are selling briefs for a Depeche Mode concert that is part of a BBC music festival in Glasgow for 16 times their face value.
The electro pioneers are playing the city’s iconic Barrowland Ballroom as part of the BBC’s 6 Music festival which runs March 24-26.
Within minutes of the £30 tickets going on sale at 10am yesterday through the Ticketweb site, they had all been snapped up.
Just seconds later The National was able to find tickets on the Viagogo website selling for £572 apiece.
It wasn’t just Depeche Mode fans who were being fleeced.
Tickets for Sparks and Goldfrapp were available on the secondary ticketing website and changing hands for around £200, way up on the £30 being charged by the O2 Academy venue.
However, the BBC warned fans buying tickets off touts that they would likely not get into gigs.
“To guard against ticket touts reselling tickets for profit and tickets being resold via the web for profit, 6 Music Festival tickets will be printed with the name of the lead purchaser who will have to show their ID on arrival at the venue to gain entry.
There will be security around the venues to monitor any touting of tickets. Anyone offering their tickets for resale is breaking the terms and conditions they agreed to during the booking process and we reserve the right to cancel them. We strongly recommend the public do not buy tickets being resold as the purchaser cannot guarantee they are genuine and not copies, and without the ID of the lead purchaser they will not gain entry to the festival.”
The BBC added: “The 6 Music Festival isn’t a stadium music gig, but a boutique music festival held in a range of small to medium sized venues. We’re delighted that a band of the scale of Depeche Mode have decided to play one of Glasgow’s most iconic venues, Barrowland, where they first played 33 years ago.
“The measures that we have put in place will ensure that it is these fans who get into the festival.”
The capacity of Glasgow's east end Ballroom is around 2,000. Depeche Mode’s last concert in the UK was at the 02 in London where they played to 34,000 people.
epeche Mode fan James Cassidy, 37, blasted secondary websites he said were preventing music fans from getting in to shows.
He said: “We tried on the phone and laptop at 10am. The phone line was jammed and the website had a really long wait. As soon as we were first in the queue it said that [the concert] had sold out and redirected us from Ticketweb to Viagogo.
“At that time [Viagogo] were selling them for £260 and I’ve checked back since and it’s gone to £600 upwards. It’s a high-profile gig and the capacity is only 2000 but if it was only genuine fans I might have got some [tickets].
He added: “This is an absolute rip-off. You would think the BBC would be more aware of this happening and put more restrictions in place.”
Online tickets touts have been the bugbear of music fans for years. Some websites use “bots” – automated software that harvests tickets in bulk, and then resells them.
Music industry experts told a recent inquiry by the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee there could be a criminal element to many of the sellers who buy large quantities of tickets and then sells them through secondary websites.
Secondary ticketing sites are increasingly lucrative. Ticketmaster, who run Ticketweb, saw sales on the group’s secondary platforms jump by 33 per cent in the first three quarters of 2016, to more than $1bn.
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