Ed Sheeran has thrown his weight behind an anti-scalping ticketing site coming to New Zealand soon.
Twickets allows fans to buy and sell spare concert tickets at face value to other fans, rather than the inflated prices on sites such as Viagogo.
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With over 500,000 users in the UK, Australia has been chosen as the second place to launch the British company, with the website and social media platforms going live today, and Frontier Touring has advised the service will be available for Ed's Auckland and Dunedin shows soon.
"We're here to provide an alternative," Twickets Australia's Managing Director Danny Hannaford said.
"It seems like something everyone wants to see available in Australia. Viagogo had an Ed Sheeran ticket on sale for $3500 for a concert where the top price was $168. That is an astronomical mark up."
Hannaford said most music lovers who genuinely can't use tickets they have purchased just want their money back, not to make a major profit.
"Shows go on sale a year in advance now. Not everyone knows what they're doing in a year, they buy a ticket and as it gets closer to the show they may not be able to make it. If a real fan has a spare ticket, or they may have bought an extra one they don't need, they can go to our website and they are only allowed to sell it at face value or below.
"It's a safe space where fans can sell a ticket at face value and other fans can buy the ticket at the price it was originally on sale for and not get ripped off."
People sign up to Twickets website, or social media pages, and get an alert when tickets for an artist are posted for resale by another fan - such as any Sheeran fans trying to offload tickets they no longer need.
Twickets charges 10 per cent to the buyer, but sellers can resell tickets with no fee
There is also protection in place for those who use the site.
"It's very rare to have any issues," Hannaford said. "Scalpers tend not to use the site as they can't make any money, it goes against everything they want to do."
Twickets is launching with music tickets first but plans to also cater for sporting and theatre events.
"There's an issue all around with ticketing at the moment, it's not just music," Hannaford said.
"If you can sell it people are trying to make a huge profit on it. It's not sustainable long term for the venues or the artists. A lot artists are very conscious of what it looks like for them when their tickets sell on these resale sites. We offer a fair solution to fans.
We might not be doing the volumes of these bigger agencies, but we're doing it legitimately and we're doing it fairly."