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Fans eagerly attended Beyoncé and Rihanna’s respective international tour stops, frequently capturing their excitement on video and sharing the experience on social media. But for every fan who attended the Formation World Tour and Anti World Tour at London’s Wembley Stadium, thousands of seats were left empty.
According to The Daily Mirror, ticket scalpers – or touts as they’re known in Britain – are to blame for the roomy concert spaces. The illegitimate promoters are thought to have bought thousands of tickets and sold them to fans at outrageously high prices, and when hundreds went unsold, hundreds of seats were left empty. For Rih-Rih’s show at the UK arena June 24, the 90,000-capacity venue was only half filled with adoring fans.
An anonymous show promoter, who has been in the business for 40 years, told the Mirror the “Sledgehammer” singer would be left embarrassed by the clear indication that the show did not appear to sell out.
“I have known artists who have seen a few empty seats in a row and wanted to know why,” he said. “The touts are certainly compounding the problem.”
Metro.co.uk reported there were many seats left bare during Beyoncé’s tour stop at Wembley July 3, even though the star announced the show was sold out.
Ticket fraud expert Reg Walker, who works at Reading, United Kingdom’s Iridium Consultancy, told the Mirror the intense price hikes will lead to worse turnouts for concerts.
“Touts are not interested in bums on seats. They don’t care if there is an empty block of seats or about the atmosphere at the concert. All they care about is money. They make their money at the front end, just as the tickets go up for sale and they’ve harvested all their tickets from pre-sales using bots – computer programs which let them get thousands of tickets.”
Walker said the scalpers take advantage of eager fans wanting to see their favorite artist by hiking up the prices to fit demand.
“They will make three and four times the face value when fans are desperate to get tickets and can’t – and are left to stump up fortunes on secondary sites. As interest dies down, when they’ve made their profit, they’ll reduce their ticket prices to get the pennies in the pound back.”
