StubHub has questioned the motives behind Ticketmaster's decision to close its resale sites.
Get Me In! and Seatwave will be replaced with a new fan-to-fan ticket exchange to be rolled out in the UK and Ireland in October and Europe in early 2019, leaving Viagogo and eBay-owned StubHub as the remaining major secondary ticketing platforms.
But in a statement to Music Week, Wayne Grierson, regional manager Northern EMEA at StubHub, said: “This move by Ticketmaster is secondary ticketing in all but name. It is simply a step to consolidate the ticketing market and will ultimately mean that consumers have less choice. We have seen the impact of similar approaches by Ticketmaster in the US, which makes the ticketing experience less transparent, since the total availability of tickets for an event are not disclosed.
“If the goal is providing fans with the best purchasing experience, it should be far easier to get tickets in the first place. Tens of thousands of tickets – as many as 54% on average in some markets – never even go on public sale.
“StubHub strongly believes that an open, competitive, transparent secondary ticketing market which is subject to consumer protection serves consumers best.”
Explaining Ticketmaster's decison last week, MD Andrew Parsons said: “We know that fans are tired of seeing tickets being snapped up just to find them being resold for a profit on secondary websites, so we have taken action.
"Our new Ticketmaster ticket exchange lets fans sell tickets they can’t use directly through their Ticketmaster account, for the price originally paid or less."
AXS recently launched its own “transformative” resale site to cap resale sites in Europe, a move which saw AEG venues The O2 and SSE Arena, Wembley end their partnership with StubHub.
Labour MP and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse Sharon Hodgson called on Viagogo and StubHub to "clean up their act" following Ticketmaster's move.
