In a week where the issue of gig ticketing has risen to become a matter of national import on a par with pensioners’ winter fuel payments and the Ukraine War, one new-ish pop star has taken matters into her own hands.
Chappell Roan, the glammy singer best known for her summer hit Good Luck Babe, has cancelled a load of tout-bought tickets to an upcoming gig in Franklin, Tennessee and will re-sell them to genuine fans.
She took to Twitter/X and announced it yesterday, saying “Scalpers and bots just bought up all the tickets so we went through and cancelled all the scalper tickets that we could. I want to make sure that tickets go to people who actually want to come and are fans.”
Franklin ♡‧₊˚ We scrubbed and canceled scalper tickets for my show this week and are releasing a limited number of tickets to you. Go to https://t.co/AJkuCJDc5W to request tickets now!!! pic.twitter.com/IvTiRrHU5sSeptember 4, 2024
The singer explained that she would sell the same tickets back to fans, directing them to an online Ticketmaster form where they can request for spots.
“This is the best solution that makes sense to me and my team. I know it’s confusing and it’s so annoying, but I’m genuinely so pissed about the scalper situation and think that people actually deserve to get to my show. This is a larger issue, and we’re dealing with it. I can’t wait to see people who actually deserve to be here, it means everything to me,” she concluded.
It comes just days after the nefarious practice of ‘dynamic pricing’ was brought out into the open by the Oasis ticket fiasco. Fans who had waited in online queues for hours were perturbed to find tickets that had been initially marked at £135 had now jumped in price to £337.50.
That is far from the worst example of the practice. This week it has also been reported that tickets for Adele’s final Las Vegas show before her much-trailed ‘hiatus’ have leapt from their initial price of $400 and are now selling on Viagogo for $3819.
On Monday the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced that the government would include the issue of dynamic pricing in their upcoming review of the secondary ticket market.
Artists though would be well advised to keep abreast of these issues from now on. Oasis issued a statement yesterday distancing themselves from dynamic pricing, saying they “at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used.”
They went on to say: “While prior meetings between promoters, Ticketmaster and the band’s management resulted in a positive ticket sale strategy, which would be a fair experience for fans, including dynamic ticketing to help keep general ticket prices down as well as reduce touting, the execution of the plan failed to meet expectations.”
However, pleading ignorance may no longer be a defence. As Roan has shown, artists can and should get involved in these issues. And they can make (or break) reputations.
