Ticket scalpers are threatening the future of Australia's biggest music festival, with a promoter of the Big Day Out threatening to cancel future events if governments fail to act to prevent online reselling.
Online auction site eBay yesterday achieved victory in the Federal Court, after challenging Big Day Out organisers Creative Festival Entertainment after the wording in the event's conditions of sale were changed. Effectively, the promoters said that scalped tickets would be voided, rather than be subject to voiding.eBay - who profit from ticket scalping - argued that the new wording was misleading and deceptive. Justice Steven Rares agreed with eBay, though he described the outcome as "unfortunate", acknowledging "The scalpers ... use sites such as eBay's web pages to make large profits for themselves ... eBay itself profits from this practice."
However, Justice Rares also found that Creative "did not have reasonable grounds to make the representation that every ticket resold for profit would be cancelled."
A lawyer for eBay, Daniel Feiler, claimed that his clients were working in the interests of its consumers, though Big Day Out promoter Ken West has hit back, claiming the legal action has allowed "scalpers to hide in cyberspace and make a profit from their actions."
News Ltd quotes West as saying, "I may not put the show on after next year because the more we stop scalpers, the more the Government can keep putting the scalping issue in the too-hard basket."
But West also says in a separate statement, "Rest assured, next year will be very different."
West has previously described as unworkable calls for attendees names to be printed on each ticket, a practice which helped eradicate scalping at July's smaller-scale Splendour In The Grass festival in Byron Bay.
The Big Day Out travels across Australia and New Zealand in January and February, featuring headline acts Tool, Muse, My Chemical Romance and Kasabian.
