The FanFair Alliance has accused ticketing provider StubHub of trying to “buy legitimacy” by sponsoring the 2016 Q Awards.
The eBay-owned provider will support the November 2 event at London’s Roundhouse. The event, officially entitled ‘The StubHub Q Awards in association with Absolute Radio,’ will be open to the public for the first time and will feature a live concert by pop group The Charlatans.
However, FanFair, which was launched in July by the managers of a number of groups and artists, including the Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons, One Direction and PJ Harvey, is unimpressed by the deal. FanFair was set up to lobby politicians to clamp down on online touting, and the alliance sees secondary ticketing providers such as StubHub as part of the problem currently.
“StubHub is a business complicit with harbouring professional ticket touts, ripping off fans and extracting millions of pounds each year from the UK's music economy,” FanFair said in a statement.
“The company's sponsorship of the 2016 Q Awards [now The StubHub Q Awards] comes at a particularly sensitive time, during an ongoing compliance review of secondary ticketing by the Competition & Markets Authority and with Government due to respond to the recommendations of Professor Michael Waterson that would help clean up a notoriously under-regulated sector.
“As the FanFair Alliance we have very real concerns that this partnership is simply an attempt by StubHub to buy legitimacy. We will be writing to the managers of nominated artists to further highlight these concerns, as well as the damage that industrial-scale online ticket touting is having on the wider music business.”
StubHub is selling primary tickets for the event, but is not currently allowing tickets to be resold for the event, according to Music Week magazine.
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