Adele 'saves fans £4m' by taking tour tickets out of touts' hands

Industry analysis finds singer controlling sales through her own website has rescued 36,000 tickets

Adele is toppling the touts by selling tickets through her own website

Adele rescued 36,000 tickets from the hands of touts by controlling sales for her 2016 tour through her own website, an industry analysis has found.

More than 500,000 fans followed Adele’s request to pre-register on a website in order to qualify to buy tickets for the hotly-anticipated UK concerts next Spring.

Working with the ticketing website Songkick, Adele and her management team were able to identify accounts they believed belonged to touts.

Jonathan Dickins, Adele’s manager at September management, said that that more than 18,000 “known or likely touts” were de-registered before the UK pre-sale tickets were made available.

Media Insight Consulting estimates that 36,000 tickets were rescued from touts. Research showed that there were over 50,000 people willing to pay over £750 for each ticket, valuing the potential lost profit for touts at just over £29m.

The research found that on average, people were willing to pay £181 for tickets, suggesting that Adele’s move saved her fans £4.2m.

However Songkick received complaints from Adele ticket purchasers, who reported seeing other people's personal data, including names and postal addresses. The company apologised but said no passwords or credit card details were revealed.

Tickets for the shows, which include six nights at the O2 Arena in London in March, are still available at inflated prices on secondary websites. Songkick and Adele’s team only controlled 40% of the total 400,000 tickets available.

Tickets are being offered for £2,000 by touts but fans who don’t have a valid photo ID matching the name of the customer who bought the ticket may find they are barred entry at venues.

New ticketing regulation under the Consumer Rights Act means that tickets on secondary markets now have to declare the seat numbers for tickets that are being resold.

This means that Adele’s team Adele can identify a ticket that is being resold (in breach of terms and conditions) and reallocate it for sale to fans.