The Electric Avenue festival at Hagley Park, taking place 27 and 28 February sold out in under 20 minutes. Photo: Supplied
A Christchurch man has found it cheaper to fly to Australia to see his favourite singer than it is to buy a scalped ticket to watch her at a music festival just two blocks from his house.
Tickets to the two-day Electric Avenue festival at Hagley Park sold out in under 20 minutes, and long-time Kesha fan Lennon Cameron missed out despite being in the queue.
He told Morning Report that he started hunting for a resale ticket, but the prices were outrageous.
"Originally I was looking at getting just a one day ticket, I think that was about $200," he said.
"But with the resale tickets coming through, the way it's working at the moment is people want you to transfer a cash amount to their bank account before they'll then give you the link to be able to buy the ticket to the concert itself, and those prices are at least double the price of what the ticket originally was.
"It's between $600 to $1000 to get a weekend pass to the show."
Even if he was willing to pay that much, Cameron said there was no guarantee the scalper would follow through on their promise.
"There's a few Facebook groups that seems to be the easier way to find where the tickets are, but you kind of have to take that gamble and hope the person you're dealing with is trustworthy enough to end up selling you that ticket," he said.
"I know there have been cases where people have gone ahead and made those cash deposits and then the person drops off the face of the earth."
Cameron criticised the pre-sale process.
"The pre-sales for the show, to me, didn't seem to be managed very well. I think people like me, the fans who really wanted to see those artists, have missed out and a lot of the tickets have fallen into the hands of scalpers who have used it as a money-making operation," he said.
"I had friends that would go into the [virtual] queue after I had been waiting in for probably half an hour and they would get through before it would let me get through."
"It was all a bit of a free-for-all and it just didn't seem that a lot of the tickets went to where they should have been going."
Lennon Cameron said he later discovered it would be cheaper, and less risky, to hop across the ditch for one of Kesha's other shows.
"It's been cheaper for me to get a ticket to her show over in Melbourne and then get the flights included here and back than it has been to pay a scalper just to get a ticket and run up the road to Hagley Park and see the show, so across the ditch I go," he said.
An Electric Avenue spokesperson said a small number of tickets had been identified as being held by scalpers, some on social media and others reported directly to Team Event.
They're warning fans not to buy from unauthorised sellers, and said the festival's policy was to cancel all tickets purchased under a scalper's name once identified.
"Our simple advice is don't [buy]. Over the years we've seen so many stories of people being burned through third party sites such as Viagogo. When we find out who they are, our policy is to cancel all tickets purchased under their name. So we highly recommend you don't take the risk of purchasing anywhere other than Moshtix," they said.
"Resale is due to open soon, so stay tuned to our social media pages for more information."
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