Adele ticket price gauging sparks financial auth. investigation

The madness surrounding tickets for Adele concerts in the Netherlands being sold out within hours only to be resold at much higher prices, sparked Minister Henk Kamp of Economic Affairs to launch an investigation. He asked the Authority for Consumers and Market to investigate the circumstances, the Minister wrote to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, Z24 reports.

One of the things the Authority will look into is the ticket selling sites Ticketmaster and Seatwave. Ticketmaster was the first to sell Adele tickets. Not long after sister company Seatwave started selling tickets at a much higher price. Amounts of well above the thousand euros were not unheard of.

The Minister warns music fans not to get their hopes up and expect miracles from this investigation, however. Not much can be done about the fact that for some concerts and events there will be a much higher demand than tickets available.

The reselling of concert tickets at much higher prices is a particular point of concern for opposition parties SP and CDA. In December the SP launched a hotline where people can report buying too expensive tickets from resellers. The two parties also submitted a legislative proposal which, if accepted, will limit resellers to adding no more than 20 percent to the original ticket price. The proposal is currently with the Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate, which is set to discuss it in February.

According to Z24, irregularities with concert tickets is not limited to the Netherlands. Belgium is facing the same problems, with Adele- and K3 fans are also falling victim of exorbitant ticket prices. In the country 16 tickets bought a total of 17 thousand tickets for K3 performances and resold them adding 25 euros to the price. According to the newspaper, the perpetrators' trail is pointing towards the Netherlands.