Tom Waits Outsmarts Touts On Latest Tour.
It’s no real surprise to anyone who knows me even vaguely, that most things Tom Waits related will interest me a great deal. Even through the almost insufferable recent canonisation of Waits as a referential artist, in that by referencing him, you have attained some form of intellectual status. There is nothing more exasperating than listening to some ill informed, pretentious analogy of work which you are not only already familiar, but hold quite dear as well.
Still, this is not going to become a diatribe vetted against the worrying number of Tom Waits fans who make me want to inflict personal harm upon their Topshop Trilby wearing persons. Having missed the point anyway, we shall leave them be for now and allow them to live in their misguided, self important, wankery ways.
More importantly, without resorting to Michael Eavis levels of fluid samples, dna testing, retinal scans and various other forms of internal investigation to even get in the running for an application form to apply for a ticket to one of his concerts, Tom Waits seems to have found a worryingly simple resolve to the problem.
Commencing his first world tour in a long, long time, Tom Waits has made it clear from the start that he disapproves of the current system in which people can get horribly fleeced for tickets on sites like eBay and by touts at the events themselves. In an attempt to stop this, he has made one rule clear for anybody purchasing tickets for any of the upcoming dates.
The person, who buys the ticket, goes to the show. Whoever uses their credit card to purchase the tickets must be the person attending. Photo ID must be shown alongside the credit card which the tickets were purchased on. They are allowed to buy only two tickets, the name of the guest need not be supplied.
The fact that he even managed to get Satan’s Own Ticketmaster to bow down to these stipulations is a show of great strength and integrity, missing from so many factors in the world of big name concerts. This way, no tickets will be showing up on eBay or outside the shows because if the name does not correspond, entry will not be allowed.
As I was trying for tickets to several of the upcoming shows, I saw that the system was the same throughout Europe, the one exception being the Czech ticket site, were it appeared that you could only buy one ticket per registered user. A little harsh methinks. Still, with the rest of the countries allowing two per person, this made things a little easier.
It is such a simple system, the two ticket limit, the production of relevant ID. It will have its critics, however, I feel that it is fair and just and gives fans a fighting chance to get to see their favourite artists without having to subsidise the finances of eBay touts who make an absolute fortune by bulk buying tickets to all major events.
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Niamh on July 30th, 2008
Hi there,
Just read your thoughts on the Tom Waits anti-touting strategy, and I wholeheartedly agree with you.
Was listening to Liveline earlier, and several people called to complain – some people had bought tickets for others as gifts etc, so there are people holding tickets with no interest in Tom Waits and methinks there may be a good few empty seats because people never took notice of the conditions – which were very clear to me when I was trying to buy them – I thought it was clear? Yes, it’s a pity wou can’t buy tickets as a surprise gift, but really that’s a small price to pay for a fairer system.
I didn’t realise there was a new wave of fans with pretentions, this is interesting, especially if this new system helps to filter them out, ha!
I am going along later to the first gig, should be interesting to see how it works out.
Niamh