Ireland’s largest ticket vendor, Ticketmaster, has today announced the closure of its subsidiary site Seatwave and GetMein in October with no new ticket sales added before then.
The secondary ticketing sites served as a platform on which users could resell tickets face value and over, often buying and making a profit on multiple tickets at a time.
It’s exactly the sort of practice that the new ban on the resale of tickets above face value in Ireland is aiming to target. As such, it seems the company wanted to close the site before the new law forced the closure for them.
The closure will also come into effect in the UK and Europe so it may be a case of Ticketmaster seeing that the outlets will no longer be viable.
Ticketmaster have cited the feedback of their customers as the incentive for the close, saying “That’s right, we’ve listened and we hear you: secondary sites just don’t cut it anymore and you’re tired of seeing others snap up tickets just to resell for a profit.” as part of a larger press statement, available here.
The company also revealed in the same statement that they will be launching a “fan-to-fan ticket exchange” site, in which tickets can only be passed on for face value or less, early next year. There will be 15% handling charge on those transactions that will go to Ticketmaster not the seller.
