Ticketmaster UK has taken a big stride in culling ticket resale websites, this week announcing it will be shutting down its secondary websites, GET ME IN! and Seatwave.
In a statement posted online on Monday, the ticket sales and distribution company announced that it will launch a fan-to-fan exchange on the service in October, where users can buy or sell tickets at the original or lower price.
The announcement has been praised by fan-to-fan resale platform Twickets, which has been endorsed by the likes of Foo Fighters, Adele and Ed Sheeran who teamed up with the company for his stadium tour of Australia earlier this year.
"It is encouraging to see the biggest ticketing company in the world taking this step, which validates our face value resale policy of the past seven years," Twickets CEO, Richard Davies, said in a statement given to The Music today.
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"The decision will hopefully enable those who are no longer able to attend a Ticketmaster show to pass on tickets at face value to those who wish to attend.
"However, the battle to create a fairer, more transparent, resale market continues. Companies such as Viagogo and StubHub, and Ticketbis in Europe, still tout tickets on an industrial scale, placing profit ahead of fairness to consumers."
The news comes after popular Australian festival, Victoria's Aunty Meredith, announced that its application for its 2018 event to be declared protected under the Major Events Act was successful, meaning it is now an offence "to sell, advertise or offer to resell a Meredith ticket for more than 10% above its face value purchase price".
In a statement given to The Music, Frontier Touring Managing Director Michael Gudinski says he hopes the news coming out of the UK will make its way to Australia.
"We’ve been closely watching the UK and Irish government investigations into the secondary ticket market and it is clear the writing is on the wall for not just scalpers but those that have facilitated them in the past," Gudinski said.
"It’s an incredibly exciting time to see the tide start to turn on this issue and we can only hope that Australia and New Zealand are next in line."
The Music has contacted Ticketmaster Australia for comment.
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