Secondary concerns over tickets.

Industry calls for Government intervention to protect ticket-buying consumers from online fraudsters

Promoters, ticket companies, festival organisers and secondary ticketing operators are calling for the Government to intervene over secondary ticket sales in an effort to protect consumers from being duped by online fraudsters.

The calls come after a summer of discontent that saw thousands of people turned away from festivals after collectively paying online ticket agencies millions of pounds for tickets that never existed.

The organisers of the twin Leeds and Reading festivals report that 5,000 people turned up to the sites without tickets, having arranged with online re-sellers to collect their passes outside the festival entrance.

"People turn up with a printout looking for their tickets and it's us who get the blame for not having them," says Melvin Benn, managing director of promoters Festival Republic. "We have to explain to each and every person what has happened and it becomes very difficult."

Now, with the outdoor season drawing to a close, promoters up and down the country are waiting for the online touts to turn their attention to the year-end tour schedule, which is as lucrative for the live business as the fourth quarter is for record sales.

The festival tickets fiasco achieved national notoriety when ticketing website SOS Master Tickets left hundreds of punters out of pocket at the V Festival last month. The collapse of another online agency, Xclusive Tickets, has exacerbated the situation.