When Danny bought tickets to see Deftones in Crystal Palace Park he was not expecting to be initiated into an apparent subterfuge.
Yet shortly before the south London gig, Viagogo, the resale platform that sold him the tickets, sent him a scanned copy of a passport ID page belonging to a Dutchman he had never met.
A Viagogo staff member told Danny to flash the document if asked by door staff for the ID of the “lead booker”.
“It felt like we were being asked to take part in a deliberate deception,” said Danny, who asked for his name to be changed. “I know it’s not the world’s biggest crime but I run a business and it’s not a good look.”
Danny’s experience underscores the difficulties fans face amid opaque and questionable business practices in reselling tickets for UK events, as Labour closes in on a long-promised clampdown on the industry.
He was not the only one who received the ID instruction. In an apparent breach of data protection laws, Viagogo mistakenly copied him into an email with several strangers, all of whom received a link to the same scanned passport.
The reason for this curious pre-gig ritual is that Ticketmaster, the primary ticket agent for the Deftones gig, had expressly forbidden unauthorised resale in its terms and conditions.
To get round this, evidence seen by the Guardian indicates, Viagogo arranged the sale on its own platform. Viagogo then appears to have told the seller to send the tickets through Ticketmaster’s own transfer systems, which are intended for groups of friends to share tickets between them at face value.
But the face on the passport was not a friend of Danny’s.
In fact, according to a ticketing expert, Reg Walker, the seller was a well-known tout and prolific user of ticket-buying “bots”, software deployed to harvest tickets illegally and resell them for big profits.
“It [the sale] is potentially a fraud offence because if the buyer gets stopped, they may not be let in,” said Walker, who works with venues to stop touts.
He said the use of bots to bypass limits on how many tickets can be purchased also constituted fraud.
Danny and his friends were not challenged at the turnstile and saw Deftones.
Not everyone who buys a resold ticket is so lucky.
Kieran Maguire, an author and academic specialising in football finance, is no stranger to market forces. He was desperate to see Fontaines DC in London’s Finsbury Park, so he bought a ticket from Viagogo for £92, including fees.
On the day of the gig, just as he was about to buy his train ticket to London, Viagogo told him the ticket was not available after all.
“I’d noticed by now that tickets were on sale [on Viagogo] for £200,” said Maguire.
“I’m not daft, I know what probably happened. The vendor is now able to sell it for more so they’ve withdrawn it and made it available to somebody else. The feedback I saw was that it had happened to quite a few people.
“I count myself lucky compared to people who might have come from overseas and booked a hotel.”
Viagogo does reimburse the cost of tickets when it fails to deliver them but not extra costs such as accommodation and travel. The company said it apologised for failing to provide tickets after the sale “fell through” and said Maguire received a full refund.
“The rules, as they work at present, are completely anti-fan and encourage a touting culture,” said Maguire.
Viagogo said it had strict anti-fraud measures in place and denied it encouraged a touting culture.
But the existing culture, and the rules that angered Maguire, may be about to change.
Earlier this year the government opened a consultation on capping for-profit resale at between zero and 30%, making good on Labour’s general election manifesto.
Resale at face value plus a service charge, such as through Ticketmaster’s internal system and third-party providers such as Twickets, would be unaffected.
To many fans, as well as to music industry figures, the choice facing the government is a no-brainer, particularly given the resale industry’s chequered history.
The Guardian has previously uncovered evidence of how resale sites can be used by professional touts, some of whom scoop up tickets through illegal methods, such as using bots, multiple IDs and even employing people to masquerade as separate customers to bypass ticket limits.
Having skipped the long online queues, the touts then exploit fans’ disappointment and desperation to charge huge mark-ups.
A recent analysis of more than 1,000 ticket listings by the telecoms company and venue sponsor O2 uncovered mark-ups of between 100% and 1,149% on gigs by acts including Billie Eilish, Oasis and Diana Ross.
Such profits create incentives for dubious practice.
In the past few years members of several powerful tout networks have been jailed after making millions of pounds by committing multiple frauds, including via prominent resale sites.
Anti-touting campaigners continue to uncover evidence of so-called speculative selling, a fraudulent practice where touts advertise tickets they do not have, hoping to secure a sale first and source the tickets later.
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Other lowlights include Viagogo profiting from an Ed Sheeran gig for a cancer charity and refusing to attend a parliamentary evidence session into its practices.
Touts and the resale platforms who earn a commission from their sales are not going down without a fight.
Last year, as Labour closed in on election victory, they held a secret meeting to raise funds for a lobbying campaign to quash the policy. The plot, exposed in undercover footage filmed by the Guardian, appears to have failed.
In recent weeks, a series of smartly presented reports have emerged, warning that the alternative to resale platforms and their much-maligned business model is even worse.
A cap on the legitimate and regulated resale market, they say, will lead to a surge in outright fraud and scams, with touts plying their trade instead through social media, where consumers have no guarantees of a refund when things go wrong.
One key report, written by the public affairs consultancy Bradshaw Advisory, points to polling which suggests that rates of fraud are higher in Ireland and the Australian state of Victoria, both of which restrict resale, than they are in the UK.
However, the report conceded that there is no available data to show whether fraud actually rose because, or even after, restrictions on resale were introduced.
What is more, in the initial post on its website outlining the report’s findings, Bradshaw failed to disclose that the work was paid for by the resale site StubHub, only amending this after a complaint by music industry anti-touting group, FanFair Alliance.
A spokesperson said the company did disclose the relationship in press releases and that its research was independent and unaffected by StubHub’s position.
Viagogo also paid for a report, by the Centre of Economics and Business Research (CEBR), which concluded that a resale crackdown could cost the economy £183m, if 25% of ticket holders decided neither to attend nor resell their ticket at face value.
NME, the 72-year-old music magazine, is among outlets that have been paid to publicise the findings via advertorial posts. The magazine did not respond to a request for comment.
Adam Webb, a spokesperson for FanFair Alliance, questioned the evidentiary value of reports that produced outcomes so apparently favourable to the companies that commissioned them.
“Both these groups have presented the Bradshaw and CEBR reports as independent and authoritative, despite everyone being on the resale industry payroll,” said Webb.
He said there was “no actual evidence” of fraud rising in Ireland after curbs on resale took effect and such a conclusion ran counter to what FanFair Alliance had been told by Irish banks.
The CEBR said its ethical policy meant that it would not say anything on behalf of paying customers that it would not in principle say if it were unpaid.
Viagogo also appears to have a commercial relationship with two private anti-fraud organisations, We Fight Fraud and Get Safe Online, both of which have spoken of the perils of price caps.
We Fight Fraud said: “We’ve been open about Viagogo as a funder, as we are with multiple other consumer brands whom we advise on safety and crime prevention.
“The source of funding does not influence our findings. The integrity of our methodology and the data itself are what determine the outcomes.”
Get Safe Online said: “Purely impartially, we believe that the enforcement of a ticket price cap will open up an opportunity for scammers to upscale ticket fraud, especially on social media – putting thousands of fans at potential risk. Our focus has always been,and will always remain, consumer protection, irrespective of any relationships we enter into with third parties.”
Viagogo said it was a regulated marketplace that operated in compliance with consumer law “with robust security and fraud measures in place”.
“Sellers on Viagogo must adhere to strict policies. If Viagogo has reason to believe a listing is speculative after review, it is taken down and we ask the seller to provide further proof of purchase.”
The company said it apologised for the apparent GDPR breach and said it took data protection seriously, provided regular training, and would review its procedures.
StubHub International said: “We are committed to keeping fans safe from real ticket fraud which takes place on unregulated channels such as social media […].
“As a regulated secondary ticketing platform, StubHub International is one of the safest options for consumers wishing to purchase a resale ticket, and we remain dedicated to protecting fans in their pursuit to see their favourite live events.”