Ticket Touts Out

Once again the summer is almost upon us, and fingers crossed its going to be sun, sea and festivals.

We already have a sold out Glastonbury, T In The Park and V Festival and with the release of the line up and ticket details for the Reading & Leeds Festivals imminent all eyes are looking over security for the festivals.

Over the years Glastonbury festival received a high amount of criticism over its safety and crime. With people regularly turning up to the festival and simply just hopping over the fence. This lead to Glastonbury organizer Michael Eavis to take a massive step and introduce the ‘superfence’. A 12-foot tall steel fence to guard the perimeter of Glastonbury. This has been known to be a great achievement.

But almost ten years on from this problem and Glastonbury it’s a modern day dilemma that is troubling festival chiefs. Ticket touting.

Glastonbury has done well with their id style cards, as they get attendees to send them a photo when applying for the festival.

But Reading and Leeds head chief Melvin Benn is concerned that ticket touts are now up to something new. Melvin thinks that touts are trying to scam people twice. Firstly through selling them bogus tickets online then when they get to the festivals and cant get in but are desperately seeking away to get inside the same touts will be on hand to sell them a second fake set of tickets for a high end price. Benn said: “The crook’s are getting better.”

Benn believes that this could be a constant problem for major UK festivals over this summer. But how will this be prevented in future years to come?

Will Glastonbury’s ID card scheme come into use over all major festivals or will it be a new type of security measure?

Melvin Benn though is looking towards sporting events, mainly football and the world cup for a solution. Benn wants to use scanning systems that are widely used in football stadia throughout the world.

Benn said: “The technology is there – it’s already in place for ticketing at football stadiums. However, applying that in a green field is often a much more difficult task.”

Benn wants all major festivals to have this equipment and to have tickets and wristbands that are barcoded and scanable by the summer festivals of 2013. He is also trying to get this idea for the technology applied to all music events for the future.

Benn said on the matter: “Changes will definitely be introduced this year in different forms at various festivals”

But he also wanted festival goer’s to realize that the problem starts when buying tickets and that they need to be highly cautious of where they purchase there tickets from.

Festival chiefs such as Benn have been working along side police and heads of security firms to fight against festival crime.

Such as Leeds festival police commander Superintendent Andy Battle who agrees with Benn’s idea of people being cautious of where they get their tickets. Battle said: “But all I can say to festivalgoer’s is don’t buy from touts, because all you are doing is putting money into criminals’ pockets”

Reg Walker of festival security firm iridium consultancy said he hopes “that a series of proposed testing points at festivals will act as a scaremongering tactic towards touts, as well as stopping innocent festival-goers from being scammed.”

Festival chiefs will be hoping to get this problem sorted as soon as possible to give festivalgoer’s the safest most enjoyable weekend that they can. And make them feel safe from the moment buying their ticket till the moment they leave the fields and hopefully by 2013 we wont have any of this to worry about