AC/DC tickets

demand. The Ebay scalpers make a business out of it and an extremely profitable one at that. Take for example, concert tickets that any mother of toddlers is intimately familiar with - The Wiggles. :) What happens is this. The Wiggles have a philosophy of keeping their tickets affordably priced so that lots of families can afford to attend. The most expensive tickets are around the $40 mark, with tickets being available for around $30. But the scalpers go in and buy literally hundreds of tickets up, all over Australia, leaving a greatly reduced number of tickets available for genuine customers. They then wait until the shows are sold out (happens fast of course when a relatively small percentage of buyers are buying most of the tickets). And then the auction frenzy starts. They auction them off 2 or 4 at a time. They prey on the desperate parents who missed out. Parents who might have otherwise been able to afford to take their child (who would have just loved to go; ever seen a toddler watching The Wiggles??!!) are totally pushed out because they cannot afford the inflated price of the scalped tickets. And many others pay ridiculous amounts of money so as not to disappoint their child, thus defeating entirely the philosophy of the concert being accessible to those of lower socio economic status. In Perth, it's a big deal. They only do one concert a year here. And trust me, you don't want to be left explaining to a toddler that they can't see it (because the tickets are $150 instead of $30)....it ain't pretty..... As the shows get closer, tickets go for up to 10 times the face value!!! But even the ones in the early auctions will often go for at least twice face value. I find the practise unethical and I do think it should be banned. And of course they don't just do it with The Wiggles. The scalpers make a living out of it. They are literally making hundreds of dollars on tickets for shows that they had no intention of ever seeing, often not even in their home State. The vast majority of the tickets on Ebay are not being sold by genuine punters who for unforeseen circumstances suddenly can't use their tickets. And the 'demand' is caused not by the popularity of the concert, but by the fact that these scalpers have bought up enormous blocks of tickets making it far more difficult to buy a ticket at what it was meant to be sold for. And now I'll get off my soapbox. But perhaps that explains why I think the scalping business is so unethical.