Hey, saw your thread and thought I'd share my knowledge with you as someone who used to do a bit of touting a couple of years ago and someone who has actually got Radiohead tickets in Manchester. I can't post into your thread but if you could put it in there then that would be cool.
I first started touting about 3 years ago when I'd just started uni. I was just talking to a couple of guys on my course and one of them mentioned that he'd made 10k in a year selling tickets. As soon as I heard that I just thought "I'm having a piece of this". First couple of times I tried getting tickets I either got rubbish ones or just failed but after time I got better and I haven't failed at getting a ticket for something in about 2 and a half years.
Really it's all about being super organised and getting in pre-sales. If you get in the pre-sale, you'll get tickets. For instance, I got Justin Timberlake front row seats by being signed up to his fan club The Tennessee Kids. I got really good seats for Gary Barlow at the o2 by pre-ordering his album, same with Coldplay. Loads of bands give you a pre-sale code if you sign up to their mailing list. When I got tickets for Kasabian they actually had a pre-pre-sale, general sale was Friday, o2 priority Wednesday but on the Monday they had a pre-sale for people who had pre-ordered their new album on Amazon. Most people thought tickets weren't on sale till 9am on the Friday morning, I had four standing tickets for Leeds by 9:02 on Monday.
Back to Radiohead, they had a pre-sale for people who are signed up to their fan site and they announced this at the same as the tour dates and I think it was only for existing subscribers and no new ones were allowed to try and restrict it to just real fans (which I am, I'm acutally off to see them with my mate). But me and countless other touts will have been signed up to their site for ages. I'm signed up to absolutely loads of crap just because I know that they will eventually announce a tour. There's also a website that gives people up to date information of all tours that have been announced, when tickets are on sale, details of any pre-sale. It's called Beat the Touts, somewhat ironically as I'd wager nearly everyone who uses it is in fact a tout.
But yeah, other than being super organised I don't have any special agreement with Ticketmaster for them to set aside tickets for me or anything. I just make sure I find out about any pre-sale and then usually I sit at my laptop from about 8:45 and my dad does the same and whoever gets through buys some.
I've seen a lot of people slagging off Ticketmaster calling it a fix today with the Radiohead ones cause standing tickets were sold out by 9:01. That's because they all went on Wednesday and they're not actually allowing people to sell them on Seatwave or Get Me In! which are the ones they own so there's not really much they can do about it. All the tickets being sold are on StubHub and Viagogo. I don't really think there's much that anyone can do to stop it generally either while ever there's high demand for tickets. If Viagogo and StubHub weren't selling them then people would just sell them on Ebay or Gumtree or even just advertise it on Twitter. And if you couldn't sell it on there then people would just sell outside the arena. And people would buy them. Until there aren't people willing to pay massive amounts for them it will carry on happening. One good thing about buying through Seatwave and Get Me In! is that you are either guaranteed a genuine ticket or your money back. You might pay over the odds, but you will get what you pay for. Whereas if it's all just relegated to people on Ebay or outside venues then people will just constantly get ripped off.
I think the only way they could stop it would be to go to a Glastonbury type system where you have to register before hand with a photo of yourself that is then printed on your ticket, but that would be too expensive and hassle for most promoters and venues. The likes of Ticketmaster will cancel orders if you make duplicate ones but it's still pretty easy to get round if you know how their system works. For instance, I accidentally bought 8 standing tickets from Seetickets for Noel Gallagher without realising the limit was 4 so I messaged them on Twitter trying to blag it pretending to be a panicing guy who'd bought 8 standing tickets for him and his mates without realising and thought I would lose all of my friends money. They believed me and said to just give them one of my friends name and address and they put that on one of the orders, didn't even matter that my card was used for both. Just stuck my housemate at uni on the order and everything went through fine. Plus you can just get family members to do it for you as well with their cards. The lad who I was on about earlier who made 10k once bought tickets for a Calvin Harris gig. They were £30 each and had a limit of 6 per customer. In the pre-sale he bought 6 with his card, his dad's and his brother's then sold them all for about £90 each. Easy £900 just for getting up at 8:30. Some professional touts probably do have bots and stuff but I don't even think you need them to be honest if you know what you're doing. Touts won't have even been trying to get any today as general sale is just a lottery and there's no point even bothering half the time.
I think Radiohead have tried to do as much as they can to stop it really and I do understand why people get angry about it (I'm no longer a tout anyway, just a professional better which I'm sure most people approve of). I'd probably be annoyed like you guys if I didn't know how to pretty much get tickets for anything. But like you've seen with this latest batch, they're specifically telling people they won't get in without the ID of the name on the ticket and people are still paying hundreds for them. If someone turns up at the venue with a ticket without their name on are you really gonna turn them away knowing that they're probably a huge Radiohead fan and have paid absolutely loads for that ticket? I doubt it, the tout already has their money by that point so it doesn't really achieve anything. Again, like I said earlier that's probably the only place the likes of Seatwave are any good in that you'll always get what you pay for unlike some bloke stood outside the arena. Ticket re-sale sites are also pretty good for people selling tickets they can no longer use etc. There always used to be loads of gigs I wanted to go to but my mates were really unreliable and would be like "Oh, I dunno, I'll see nearer the time". So in those cases I would just get four standing tickets, see if anyone wanted to go and if no one wanted them I would just sell them on Seatwave (sometimes for a profit if I could, some I even sold under face value).
But yeah, the secret really is that it's all about pre-sales. I'd recommend signing up to fansite type things or newsletters for all your favourite artists and if there's ever a tour announcement just start looking for how to get in a pre-sale cause 9 times out of 10 there will be one. Make sure you use the Ticketmaster app too cause it's a bit easier to connect to than the website. If you do all that then you won't have to worry about touts anymore.
