Scalping 'Biggest Problem' In Music Industry, But Chugg Says Change Is Coming

Gone are the days of sleeping rough outside your favourite record store in order to be the first in line for those sweet tickets. So how do we combat scalpers in an age of Viagogo and bots, and stop punters forking out a grand a ticket. Sure we’ve been having this conversation for a while now and it seems a bit like it’s falling on deaf ears, but Michael Chugg, a pioneer of the Australian music industry and one of the country’s most prominent music promoters, is positive that change is coming.

“The laws are coming in slowly but surely,” Chugg reflects. “There's some sort of government working force and they're having meetings in all the states and hopefully we'll get some laws that are strong enough to stop it.”

It’s clear though that despite this, Chugg, like many others, isn’t Viagogo’s number one fan. He thinks they are still “the biggest problem” in the industry, mainly because they are “showing tickets sometimes they don't even have”.

“Other times - tickets which they've bought off someone else and nine times out of ten they won't get in on them.”

“I know the English government have told Google to take Viagogo off their google search which hasn't happened yet but that's the sort of stuff that needs to happen. The biggest problem is, is that a lot of people, when they want to go to a show, they go straight online, google up the band or the venue and up comes box offices and unfortunately Viagogo have the official box office banner which is a total lie and a lot of people just go in there and buy the tickets at ridiculous prices - sometimes three, four hundred percent more than what the tickets are worth.”

But still, despite all the discussion and constant uproar, we are still seeing new players enter the secondary ticket game, with Ticketmaster even bringing in their own resale facility. Chugg is not happy about this.  “Sometimes we suspect tickets are going up before they're even being sold on the right site you know. I've even done it myself where I've googled up Ticketmaster and I haven't gone to the right box office I've gone to the resale box office.”

“And then you go onto Ticketmaster and they've got tickets for the other cities which are Ticketek tickets - well how did they get them?”

After giving “maybe 100 interviews on radio and TV and press for the last 12 months trying to get the message across,” it is clear that this is an issue that affects Chugg deeply.

“I mean, it really breaks my heart when I'm standing at the box office and somebody has driven from Bourke to Sydney to see a show and then can't get in because they've got a Viagogo ticket.”

After years of campaigning though, Chugg finally has some faith in the powers in Canberra. “At least the government after years of inactivity are finally facing up to that they've got to deal with it,” he says. “The ACCI [Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry] have been great, I mean they're really starting to work it out, so all we can do as the music industry is keep pushing the government, keep pushing the corruption body, keep communicating with the box offices. But it's very hard when people only buy one or two shows a year, to educate them.”

So how does Chugg want this change to manifest?

“Well you know the QLD government put through a law and they busted a young guy in Brisbane, printing and selling illegal Ed Sheeran tickets and he went to jail. So more of that. Up until now a lot of the states were just worried about sporting events.

“We get the blame or the act gets the blame, it's never Viagogo, it's always us. So yeah, I'm hoping they bring in some very tough laws and I'm sure it's gonna happen. But you know as I said, we've been fighting this for a few years now.

“In Italy somebody from Viagogo and Live Nation went to jail last year for this very thing and the quicker we can get into that the better but I know the corruption body agent are considering taking criminal action against Viagogo but I haven't heard any more.”

Chugg also feels with all of this, the government is now finally giving the music industry, compared to sport, the recognition it deserves.

“Look, we're getting much more recognition out of all the governments now than we've had in the past, it's not just across ticketing. It's also across Australian music not getting played enough on Australian radio. It's also about, you know, not supporting Australian music around the world. There's a whole scope.

“And of course the music industry in Australia is getting stronger and stronger so the governments are getting more pressure, and they're just looking at all our problems for the first time really.

“So we continue to go to Canberra, we continue to push wherever we can. Slowly but surely. There's a lot of people in the industry that are working tirelessly to try to resolve all this.”