Here it comes. The 10AM on sale for Iron Maiden at my local venue. I’m all set and on the internet, ready to order my tickets right at 10AM when they go onsale. OK, 3 minutes to go and I check myself; 2 different browsers open and they are sitting on the order form URL waiting to be refreshed so that I can access & submit my order. I’m all set, credit cards next to me, my fingers ready to type as fast as I can … 30 seconds to go and I can feel my hear racing a bit. Right at 10AM I refresh both my browser screens. One has an order form present, the other doesn’t, so I pay attention to the one with the order form. I ask for 2 tickets (Best Available) and I click SUBMIT. I then have to prove myself a human by filling in some captcha, then I get caught into some ‘virtual waiting room’, and when the response comes back, it says SOLD OUT. … WHAT?!?!?!?! The event just went on sale, how can it be sold out, must be a mistake. I ask for tickets again and the same process happens with the same SOLD OUT response. I sit there for over 15 minutes and for 15 minutes I continue to get SOLD OUT. How can this be? I surf to a few of the ‘big boy’ ticket reselling websites, and they already have a TON of inventory available for the exact event the box office JUST went on sale and told me sold out.
THIS IS WHY FANS HATE ‘SCALPERS’. What ends up happening is the ticket resellers have developed very expensive software that basically ‘mugs’ the online box office for just about all the tickets they want. This results in real fans never getting tickets straight from the box office and it forces them to go to the secondary market and spend a lot more than they should. Here comes Superman though, the metal band IRON MAIDEN has just put a crushing on the scalpers with ‘ticket-less’ tickets (or ‘paperless’ tickets) which forces the actual purchaser to only be allowed entry. According to the latest study, when IRON MAIDEN just did this on their last UK tour, it stopped 95% of the scalping that usually would have taken place. Kudos to IRON MAIDEN!
IRON MAIDEN’s attempt to undermine scalping is working! Good for them and great for the fans!
Written by William David