Remarkably, in an astounding betrayal by all parties involved, wildlife crime officer Peter Hunter and ecologist Maria Chenery-Woods have recently been convicted. This eye-popping revelation lays bare a dark ticket reselling industry that apparently prospered with the assistance of insiders at major ticketing firms. Hunter’s venture reached a valuation of £26.4 million in under seven and a half years. As Chenery-Woods, known as the “Ticket Queen,” stole money through ticketing fraud, the city allowed Wilkerson to use multiple identities to bypass ticket limits.
These lengthy investigations uncovered the elaborate, systemic scheme run by Hunter and Chenery-Woods. As such, they experienced huge litigation pain for their renegade ways, straying from typical touting. Rather than wait outside venues hawking tickets on the low-low, they worked together with ticketing personnel and took advantage of huge holes in the ticket-selling process. Their practices raised enough red flags to put the public and members of Congress on high alert regarding the integrity of ticket sales. Big corporations, including Ticketmaster, were instrumental in enabling these practices to fester.
Hunter committed fraud by accepting over £8,500 from a moonlighting business in less than 12 months. He went under various aliases to purchase tickets in excess of the permitted limits. This change to the law permitted him to create a monopoly by selling stock at an inflated price. In early February 2017, Chenery-Woods took a big step in her email account, updating her username from “Ticket Queen” to “Elsie Marshall.” This unusual move displayed her prowess and seriousness in evading authorities while doing business.
The tenuous relationship between touts and ticketing personnel adds another layer of complexity here. A Seatwave whistleblower revealed an unhealthy, entangled relationship between company employees and touts. Agencies and collusion This concerning disclosure hints at deeper potential collusion between the two entities. These interactions were not isolated incidents. As detailed in a barrage of recent reports, Ticketmaster’s own resale marketplaces, like Seatwave and GetMeIn!, encouraged these practices up until their closure in 2018.
“You have to build a relationship with them, they’re like a customer basically.” – Former Ticketmaster employee
In one instance, hundreds of tickets for Beyoncé’s UK tour appeared on resale sites like Stubhub mere minutes after pre-sales commenced. This extraordinarily fast ticketing sell-out raised many questions as to how these touts were able to get their hands on tickets in the first place. Media reports indicated that employees on Ticketmaster’s resale marketplaces used their access to purchase concert tickets for ticket touts. This irresponsible behavior created confusion between legal business transactions and illegal drug sales.
The massive scale of these operations created huge financial motivation for everyone who participated. Brags about their trading of huge numbers of tickets were allegedly rewarded with cash bonuses to keep up the shady practice. This environment fostered a culture that normalized ticket scalping. Accordingly, individuals such as Hunter and Chenery-Woods jumped on the opportunity.
Following these events, Ticketmaster’s then-chairman Chris Edmonds testified before Parliament in 2016. He emphasized the fact that the company was unable to track how sellers on its resale marketplaces acquired their tickets. This admission sparked concern about the accountability of large ticketing companies in overseeing their platforms and companies.
“Although the primary platforms do say that they have measures in place to try and prevent touts buying large numbers of tickets, it’s quite evident that that practice took place then and still takes place now.” – Mike Andrews from National Trading Standards
Recent legal actions against Hunter and Chenery-Woods have turned the ticketing world upside down. Unfortunately, their operations still have an outsized legacy. Paul Douglas, otherwise connected to Chenery-Woods as her former brother-in-law, was convicted on fourteen counts of fraud. This paints a chain extending of profits and money laundering used in the whole black market ticket industry.
These business practices not only hurt consumers, but hurt artists who have trouble ensuring they can get fair prices for their performances. Andrew Parsons, UK managing director of Ticketmaster, commented on the issue:
“We think it is absolutely right that artists should be able to price a small amount of the tickets at a higher price to be able to keep overall prices down and capture some of that value away from the secondary market.”
Additionally, Ticketmaster has earned a public relations beating with their responses to all of this. A statement from Viagogo emphasized their commitment to legal action against bad actors in the industry:
“Bad actors go against what we stand for and Viagogo is in full support of the legal action taken against them.”
While those investigations move forward, we shouldn’t forget the systemic exploitation and manipulation prevalent in the ticketing industry. The closure of Ticketmaster’s resale sites is an important step in the rectification of the touting scourge. There are still big unanswered questions about whether adequate steps have been made against future potential exploitation.