I Hate Ticket Scalpers

Thank you Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Thank you for proving, once again, that you do care. You care about recycling old clothes, you care about gay marriage...and now, you're taking a stand on ticket scalping.

Because this annoys me.

How is it fair for companies to go onto the websites and nabs scores of tickets, with the sole purpose of selling them at an exorbitantly higher face value than what they were originally worth? The short answer: It's not.

Ticket Scalping is ILLEGAL. In Australia, the states and territories have laws to prevent illegal acquisition and resale of tickets for the sole purposes of making money. This is definitely fair.

If you've sat on the Ticketek website hitting refresh for the twenty minutes leading up to a ticket release, you know how it feels. You know how much is at stake; how much depends upon how fast you can click buttons and enter your credit card details. However there are those that don't pay by the rules. Instead of buying tickets for their own enjoyment, they buy them to make a profit.

In Australia, these tickets often end up on sites like ViaGoGo or EBay or Gumtree. For example, Imagine Dragons are playing in a few states in October. Sold out Australia wide, tickets are available for up to $160 per ticket. And do you know how much they were originally? $66 (correct price from OzTix for the Brisbane Show).

$66. That's basically $100 profit.

So for all of those kids who are relying on their parents' credit cards, or waiting patiently for their parents to get home from work so that they can buy tickets, they often can't because of ticket scalpers and their greed for profit.

In 2011, One Direction played a limited number of shows in Australia. From my memory, because they were just gathering momentum, tickets were about $60. One was being sold on EBay for $4000.

Four. Thousand. Dollars. For one ticket. It's crazy.

So whatever you do, don't let the ticket scalpers win. Just wait for the band to come back to Australia, try to win tickets or buy them from a reputable source.

And to all those ticket scalpers:

Find a real profession. You'll only get caught.