Revenue / 11.02.22

Adele's Las Vegas Tickets Are Selling for £40,000, and Extortionate Resale Prices Are Only Getting Worse

Access Staff

iNews (U.K.) (11/01/22) Peake, Eleanor

Tickets to Adele's Las Vegas residency shows are selling on resale sites for up to £40,000 (about $45,870) per ticket, up from their original range of $800 to $1,500 (£694 to £1,302). Richard Davies with ethical U.K. ticketing company Twickets says secondary platforms have worsened ticket touting. "We've gone from having a guy standing outside a venue selling a ticket above face value, to everything going on online, which means you can sell to so many more people at a much greater volume," he notes. Davies highlights the illegal practice of speculative trading — in which organized groups of resellers promote a ridiculously expensive but nonexistent ticket, then hunt down such a ticket once they have a buyer — as especially pernicious. There is hope of relief from such chicanery through the U.K.'s aggressive ticket reselling laws, while Davies suspects that the extortionate tickets for Adele are a lure to convince people to purchase other inflated but less costly tickets. He observes that while Britain is expert at combating ticket touting, the U.S. has fewer safeguards for artists who want to prevent resales.

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Tags: Revenue