Ticket touts are making powerful enemies
AS A fixture in the nation’s sporting and cultural calendar, the Glastonbury music festival now ranks alongside football’s Cup Final or racing’s Grand National. The 136,500 tickets for this year’s event sold out in less than two hours when they went on sale on April 1st, though they cost £145 apiece.
It was not always thus. When it started in 1970, the festival cost the few hundred hippies who attended it only £1 each. Entry was free the following year. Since then, as music festivals have multiplied, Glastonbury has become the gold standard of the genre. But the embrace of the establishment has done more than simply raise prices at the gate. It has also brought ferociously tough security measures in an attempt to confound ticket touts, who resell tickets for concerts and sports events, often at vastly inflated prices. (Full Story)
