Paying hundreds of euros for a ticket to the Rolling Stones of a game of your favorite football club. Otherwise it’s no problem, but what are the tickets sold out and you have to bet on the trade? Then you will pay. In many cases the tickets are many times more expensive.
A private member’s bill was passed in the Senate today that was supposed to restrict the trade in tickets for concerts and sports matches. According to the initiators, the middlemen should be allowed to ask no more than 120 percent for a ticket to an event. Extortionate prices for tickets will become a thing of the past.
So the law didn’t make it. Opponents believe that the proposal will not work in practice and is not feasible. Artists and organizations such as the KNVB are disappointed.
Torre Florim, lead singer and guitarist of De Staat, thinks it is a shame that the law is not going through. “As an artist, we do our best to keep the prices for our tickets as low as possible. If I then look for tickets for my own shows and I see them for double the price, I think that’s a shame. Nobody benefits here of, on behalf of the merchants.”
‘Spastic’
Speaking to the ticket traders, Keje Molenaar, chairman of the trade association Eusta, says that we “shouldn’t be so spastic”. “Ticket traders already comply with the law.” For instance if you want to buy tickets for New Years Eve parties the day after christmas
“I understand the objection of bands,” says Molenaar, “but you have to look at secondary trade: it only makes up 3.5 percent of total trade. That’s how the market works in the Netherlands and there’s nothing wrong with that. Moreover, the black trade has now almost disappeared.”
If artists really want the resale of tickets to stop, then they have to start selling the tickets by name. “But they don’t feel like it. Apparently it’s too much work and costs them too much money.”
Artist Florim also doesn’t think it’s ideal to sell tickets by name: “If you’re there or you want to resell your ticket, that’s not possible, it doesn’t make it very sick.”
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