Friends who are fans of electronic musician Four Tet have been getting excited this week about his upcoming four-night run of concerts at the O2 Academy venue in Brixton, London. But there’s also an aspect of interest for the wider industry.
The gigs will see Ticketmaster selling tickets for just £5 each, entirely via mobile phones, with the company’s Verified Fan tech kicking in to attempt to keep touts and their bots out of the purchasing action. Fans will thus have to register with Ticketmaster by 28 August before the tickets go on sale on 31 August.
The news follows Ticketmaster’s recent announcement that it was shutting down its controversial secondary-ticketing platforms in the UK.
“We’re putting mobile first, and leading the charge to a fully digital future – one we know artists and fans are ready for,” said Ticketmaster’s UK MD Andrew Parsons. “These gigs present the perfect opportunity to use the tools we have to restrict resale from the get-go and give full control back to the artist over their own show.”
A penny for the thoughts of British mobile-ticketing startup Dice, which has been focusing on tout-busting 100%-mobile tickets for some time, and was often seen as a potential acquisition for Ticketmaster. The flaw in that theory was always that Ticketmaster could build this kind of technology rather than buy it, and that’s what has happened.
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