DoneDeal to scalp touts with price cap on Springsteen tickets

Touts hoping to profit from the resale of tickets for Bruce Springsteen’s concerts in Croke Park this summer are to have major obstacles placed in their path by the State’s leading online marketplace.

DoneDeal.ie has announced that it will prevent the sale of tickets on its platform if the asking price is in excess of 30 per cent of the ticket’s face value.

The company said it did not support the practice of ticket touting and vowed to do “all in its power to monitor, remove and block” adverts for the concerts if they breached its price cap.

More than 160,000 tickets for the two concerts on Friday, May 27th and Sunday, May 29th sold out within two hours of going on sale on Thursday. Prices started at €65.45 for seats, €98.50 for standing places and up to €131 for other areas, in addition to a Ticketmaster imposed service charge.

"DoneDeal is making every effort to prevent ticket touts and scams," said the company. "In advance of tickets being officially released, [it] put processes in place to ensure a cap of 30 per cent has been assigned on all Bruce Springsteen tickets advertised on the website (allowing for booking, credit card fees and any basic postal/travel expenses incurred around the sale)."

Highest bidder

Every advert posted which breaches the cap will be subject to an automated review process and removed.

The automated processes are unlikely to be 100 per cent foolproof, however, as sellers also have the option of placing adverts without prices and selling to the highest bidder.

A spokesman for the company accepted that there would be ways to circumvent the 30 per cent cap but he said that, in addition to its automated process, the website would also be “relying on users to flag high-priced tickets and it will take action to remove the adverts”.

There will still be online avenues through which people can sell tickets at vastly inflated prices, however. Within minutes of the concerts selling out, Seatwave, a company which is owned by Ticketmaster, had tickets for sale ranging in price from €135 to €1,286.

Ticketmaster has previously defended itself against charges that it was facilitating touting and has insisted that ticket holders set the price and list their tickets for resale.

It said Seatwave was “introduced in response to market demand for a safe and secure method of resale of tickets for sold-out events”.