Paul McGuinness, the former manager of U2, has said that fan club pre-sales could be encouraging scalping.
McGuinness, who led the Irish rockers’ career from their formation in the 1970s until 2013, is concerned that music fans are being left despondent by “a sense of unfairness” in the ticketing sector.
Members of U2’s fan club were allowed to buy up to four tickets for the band’s ‘The Joshua Tree’ 2017 tour days before they went on general sale in January. Anyone who joined the U2.com club before the sale began had access, although long-term subscribers were given priority.
The presale proved so popular that even more tickets had to be made available to the U2 fan club. However, with tickets soon being offered on resale sites, there was suspicion that many subscribers were using their membership as an opportunity to buy the in-demand tickets and resell them at an inflated price.
“I know there’s a sense of unfairness in the air,” McGuinness said, according to the Irish Times newspaper.
“People go online to buy a ticket and think they have an equal chance of getting that ticket. If two minutes later, they see the same tickets being scalped, it’s a miserable feeling.
“It has to be acknowledged that certain promoters, certain managers and certain acts connive at this. You could say it’s unfair that members of the U2 fan club get a two-day jump on the rest of the public. Some members of u2.com are bot operators.”
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