It’s every music-lover’s worst nightmare: rocking up to a gig by your favourite artist only to find your ticket is a fake. Months of excitement are wasted as you wonder where you went wrong with your second-hand purchase.
“For-profit ticketing platforms historically have been looked into by the regulator for actually encouraging scalpers behind the scenes,” says McCurdie. “They’re not incentivised for the ticket to get into a true fan’s hands.”There are some anti-scalping laws that govern the second-hand market. Prices generally cannot be increased by more than 10 per cent from the original sale, for instance, though there is variation between states on what events this applies to.
There are some regulations on third-party ticketing sites set through Australian consumer law. Platforms must disclose that they are not the primary ticket sellers for an event, for example.A representative of resale site Tixel says that external companies contribute to a fair and flexible ticketing market.
In an attempt to minimise the incentive for fraud, tickets on Humanitix Resale are always sold at face value. Sellers also receive an instant payment once their ticket is sold. Like every purchase across the platform, all booking fees are donated to charity. They are fixed at or below 4 per cent of the ticket value.