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MLB Present London Series

WalkerboyUK

Well-Known Member
Jun 8, 2009
21,658
23,476
It should just be illegal to sell tickets for more than face value and have done with it. I don't understand why I can't sell a ticket, even at face value, but a company can buy up all the tickets and sell them for 5 or 6 times the face value with no repercussions. It just doesn't make any sense.

One word... TAX

You won't pay tax on it if you sell as a tout outside the venue, whereas, in theory, these companies are paying a tax on their profits. Therefore, because the government benefits, they just turn a blind eye to it.
 

'O Zio

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2014
7,405
13,785
One word... TAX

You won't pay tax on it if you sell as a tout outside the venue, whereas, in theory, these companies are paying a tax on their profits. Therefore, because the government benefits, they just turn a blind eye to it.

I suppose you're probably right. Sorry state of affairs though for us mere mortals
 

fortworthspur

Well-Known Member
Nov 12, 2007
11,244
17,536
Yes but there are only 2 games in the uk.

I know. Visit the States and catch a game here. Its bette value. Plus, 50% of the fun of baseball games is hanging out at the ballpark, eating a hotdog with a beer, watching the corny between-innings entertainment, etc. I doubt it will be the same in London.
 

Gb160

Well done boys. Good process
Jun 20, 2012
23,646
93,315
Read this article last year about a tout:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mgxqb8/the-man-who-broke-ticketmaster

"In February 2005, after the band won its third Grammy of the night, U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. stepped to the microphone and made an announcement about the band's upcoming Vertigo tour: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, a lot of our long-suffering fans didn't get tickets," he said. "And I'd like to take this opportunity on behalf of the band to apologize for that."

There was a very specific reason die-hard fans couldn't buy tickets. Ken Lowson, the most successful and notorious ticket scalper in history, had bought nearly all of the 500 general admission tickets that were made available to the band's fan club for each show.

"When the sale dropped, we took 496 in New York, 492 in Boston, 496 in LA," Lowson, the former CEO of Wiseguy Tickets, told me in one of our many phone calls over the course of the last six months. "They apologized on the Grammys because of us, and then they had a second round of sales to make up for it. We took all the good tickets in that second round, too."

They need to find a way to stop people using software to buy up all these seats, that I'm not a robot tick box clearly isn't working.
I think its Billy Joel, when doing a gig refuses to sell tickets for any of the front few rows.
Instead when the show's about to start, he gets his people to gather up the fans from the back few rows and moves them to sit at the front...because it's guaranteed that they will be his proper hardcore fans.

Im paraphrasing here but his quote was along the lines of 'I'm fed up of playing shows and looking up and seeing bored rich people, so I do something about it'.

Pretty fucking cool thing to do.
 

'O Zio

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2014
7,405
13,785
I know. Visit the States and catch a game here. Its bette value. Plus, 50% of the fun of baseball games is hanging out at the ballpark, eating a hotdog with a beer, watching the corny between-innings entertainment, etc. I doubt it will be the same in London.

Agree. I see this very much like how I see the ICC over in America. Every summer now they have it and charge absolutely outrageous prices to see the teams play in this "tournament" when in actual fact it's just a crap pre-season game where half the players are kids from the academy and the big players are still on holiday or only just dusting off the rust. Seeing e.g. Spurs vs City in the ICC is nothing at all like going to see Spurs play in an actual PL game, and yet it costs more to go to the ICC game :rolleyes:

The difference with this MLB London thing is that there's virtually zero interest in baseball to begin with. They get away with it in the ICC just about because there are enough football fans who want to go along to it, but there just isn't an appetite for baseball in London, with the exception of ex-pats maybe
 
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