Ticketmaster has announced plans to close its resale sites Get Me In and Seatwave.
The company reports that it’s been listening to music fans who are priced out of attending live shows due to tickets being snapped up and resold for a profit on the secondary market.
Ticketmaster will replace both sites with a new fan-to-fan exchange programme and have shared a video to explain how it’ll work.
The company say in a statement: “We’re shutting down our sites Get Me In and Seatwave. That’s right, we’ve listened and we hear you: Secondary sites just don’t cut it any more and you’re tired of seeing others snap up tickets just to resell for a profit.
“All we want is you, the fan, to be able to safely buy tickets to the events you love.
“So, we’re launching a fan-to-fan ticket exchange on Ticketmaster, where you can easily buy tickets or sell tickets you can’t use through our website or app, at the price originally paid or less.”
The new website will launch in October in the UK and Ireland and across Europe in early 2019 on a date still to be finalised.
Ticketmaster add: “We’re excited about making ticketing simpler. All you need to think about are those incredible experiences you’ll never forget.”
Artists including Iron Maiden, have long campaigned against the secondary ticket market and ticket touts and in 2015, they joined Radiohead and Foo Fighters in an open letter to the UK government calling on them to crack down on secondary sales.