Music promoter MCD has said a "glitch" was to blame for members of the public being allowed to buy up to 50 tickets each for a concert by Canadian band Arcade Fire when they went on sale yesterday.
Tickets for the band's two nights at Dublin's Olympia Theatre in March sold out within two minutes of going on sale through Ticketmaster at 9am yesterday. Within hours, some were being sold on the internet auction site eBay for over €300, more than six times their lowest original price of €45.20.
One Arcade Fire fan, Eoghan Ó Mathúna, said he had written to the Director of Consumer Affairs to complain that offering 50 tickets to individual buyers "provides touts with a perfect environment in which to operate".
"The tickets went on sale at 9 o'clock. I was online and the minute they came on sale I clicked refresh and selected two tickets. At one minute past nine, it came up with a 'sold out' message," he said. "Then a second night came on sale a few minutes later and the same thing happened.
"Arcade Fire would be quite popular, but they're not that big - this isn't U2 we're talking about here. The thing is, 20 minutes later, they were on sale on eBay for €300, and some of them being sold from addresses in the UK." He said that at one Ticketmaster kiosk in Dublin only four tickets were purchased before they were all sold out.
Referring to the absence of the usual limit for individual buyers as a "glitch", a spokesman for MCD said: "We always try and make life hard for the touts and we hate to see this happening. Technology let us down somewhere along the way, and we are carrying out a full investigation to see how and why this happened and to make sure it doesn't happen again."
A spokesman for Ticketmaster said: "No limit was set by the promoter, but we are not aware of any large individual purchases."
The ticket price of €45.20 for Arcade Fire's Dublin concerts on March 5th and 6th make them twice as expensive as some of the other dates on their European tour. The average price is €29.86.
By comparison, a ticket for the band's concert in London the same month costs €24, while those in Paris and Berlin are selling for €34 and €23 respectively. A spokesman for MCD said the price depended mainly on the band's fee, as well as venue and insurance costs. "In comparison to other ticket sales in Ireland, it's average," he said.
