Last year, a lot of amazing things happened. Among them were fans starting to stand up to extortionate ticket prices. One campaign, which I've closely followed on here, was started by a group of Foo Fighters fans. Among them was Kelly. She was brave enough to come and take on the questioning! Read on for her reasons as to why she launched the campaign and how it's continuing. Thank you, Kelly, for taking time out to come and talk!
Hi Kelly! Please
tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m Kelly, 32 from
South Devon. I am a huge Foo Fighters fan but music in general of all
kinds.
You started the No
More Touts campaign. Can you tell us what sparked the idea and how it
all got started? What was the point that made you say “No more. We
need to do something about this.”?
This has been an
ongoing issue for so long, I was really surprised that nobody was
trying to do anything about it already. Evolution is a scientific
fact, there have been some historic changes throughout history and
they all have 1 thing in common – people. People can drive change,
people can do wonderful things…if they dare to. The Foo Fighters
world tour was on it’s way to being announced, fear had set in and
there were so many people worried about getting a ticket. Royal Blood
and Biffy Clyro fans were experiencing all sorts of hell trying to
get tickets. Cat Stevens had to cancel his own show in NYC to protect
his fans from touts. Kate Bush did everything she could to protect
her fans from touts at her recent London residency. This is great, is
it really down to the artists; no I don’t think it is. Something
had to be done, by somebody, somewhere. Even if we just make as much
noise as possible to highlight the situation and stand up and say
‘enough is enough’.
For the past several
years you’ve run the Foo Family. How did that come in to being?
What does it involve? And how was it linked it the campaign?
When the Foo Fighters
announced their long awaited Wasting Light tour and, more
importantly, the Milton Keynes Bowl gig, me and my friends were so
excited. We lived in different parts of the country so it was just
easier to make a Facebook group so we could all communicate together
about travel plans, accommodation etc. I started to receive random
requests from other Foo fans who wanted to share the excitement with
us, share their ideas and plans. The gig was set for the July, the
group was set up in November after tickets went on sale. We received
more and more requests for people to join. We had around 350 in the
group by the time the gig came around. Within that time, some great
friendships had been made, people met up at the gigs, people car
shared, a real fan network was being created under my very nose. We
all shared stories of our own fan journeys and what the band and
their music meant to us. There literally was nothing else available
on the internet for fans to communicate in this way. So we built it
up from there, to what it is today. Without the group, the campaign
would have never happened.
For the No More
Touts campaign you used the Foo Fighters as a kind of figurehead for
it. Why them specifically?
Well, we are all Foo
Fighters fans but mostly we are all music fans. We have all
experienced touting in one way or another not only with the Foo
Fighters but with other artists as well.
In late 2014, the
band also named their current North America tour “Beat The Bots”.
Do you think this has any direct connection to the No More Touts
campaign? Or was it just a reaction to the general feeling of the
fans?
I would like to think
that if it wasn’t a direct connection after all of the press No
More Touts received then it inspired a thought process, in the right
direction. This feeling within any fan community it will never go
away, until it’s resolved.
The No More Touts
Kickstarter was probably one of the most successful music related
crowd funders of 2014. For many of us, it was like watching the
countdown to New Year with the £150,000 total being exceeded in just
over a week. How much work had you put in to it prior to its launch
in September? And what do you think made it so successful?
A great team of
dedicated people who wanted to drive this forward and make it work.
We did lots of research into locations, historical relevance,
different cities. Birmingham is in the centre of the country, it has
great transport link and an international airport. It’s also the
home of Rock n Roll!! This project had been batted about for some
time in general conversation between a group of us and one day I just
thought ‘I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it now’ and
I contacted Kickstarter. It did take a few rejections from
Kickstarter before the project eventually met their guidelines. We
had a press release ready to go and had a team of people allocated to
certain aspects of just getting it out there. We really wanted to put
pressure on the government and not only what we were doing but most
important why we were doing it.
There are many
people out there who are looking at getting into crowdfunding. What
advice would you give them creating a successful campaign?
Be absolutely sure of
your end goal and how you are going to get there, these things don’t
just happen themselves you really have to know what you’re doing
and when you’re doing it. We had a timeline that we followed, we
knew when the press release was going out and we knew we would hit
target quickly.
Even though the
Kickstarter didn’t come to its intended conclusion, it’s still
viewed by many as being a success. What kind of feedback did you get
from it all? Have discussions surrounding ticket touting (ticket
scalping to our friends in other countries) grown? Are you finding
other people are now taking an interest? What’s happening next with
the campaign?
There are 2 people who
if they can, will change this for all fans moving forward and that’s
Sharon Hodgson MP & Mike Weatherly MP who are both supportive of
this movement. They have both recently launched a ‘put fans first’
campaign over social media, driving people to write to their local
MP’s to support this during the debate in the house of commons
later this year (possibly March). I received an email from Mike prior
to the campaign launch asking for our support, which was great. The
UK Foo Fighters fan base is now known for standing up for something
we believe is not right and I am pleased with that achievement in
itself. We received some great feedback from other fan groups via
social media. One fan base that really got on board was the
Blackstone Cherry fan group. People really came together to help make
as much noise as possible, regardless of which band or group we
followed it was all for a common purpose.
One of the big
issues surrounding ticket touting is that the government have taken
very little interest. Other countries have laws in place to protect
fans while the UK only regulates the resale of football and Olympic
tickets. Have the UK government started to listen more in the wake of
the campaign? Have there been reactions from leaders in other
countries? What kind of regulations would you like to see put in
place?
I think it’s
important to remember, everybody should be able to sell on a ticket.
It’s just not feasible to ban the resale of tickets all together.
Things happen in life which means that peoples plans change and they
can’t always attend an event where a ticket was purchased sometimes
up to 6-8 months in advance. Companies like ‘Stubhub’ and ‘Get
Me In’ have created this platform for people to buy and sell
tickets. But when it gets down to the nitty gritty and people are
being sold fake tickets or being forced into buying tickets at 30
times their face value these companies respond with ‘we have
created a platform for others to use, we don’t control the prices
of tickets’ which I believe to be a complete cop out. If somebody
creates a service or a platform then they should be responsible for
the protection of the people that use it. The whole industry needs to
work together to resolve this. At the moment it’s the artists that
are trying to drive change but they can’t do this on their own. As
consumers we are entitled to a fair and transparent service, to feel
protected and know that we are being looked after – just like we
would with any other retailer. The secondary ticket market are
digging their heels into the ground, nothing has changed. Now it’s
up to the government – if they listen. Yes, fans could boycott the
secondary ticket market but when tickets are shown as ‘sold out’
and you’re automatically directed to a sister site or ‘fan site’
where there are tickets available then it’s a monopoly and people
have no choice.
Yet there are a few
people who are for ticket touting, citing the free market and that
people will pay whatever is required for a ticket. What would you say
to those people?
These people have more
money than sense. Anybody who thinks it’s ‘ok’ to spend 10x the
ticket price for a ticket 5 minutes after its been released on
general resale is crazy and doesn’t represent the general public at
all. Music means a lot to people, especially live music. I’m sorry,
I just don’t understand anybody that thinks the free market is the
place for event tickets, regardless of if its sport, music or
whatever….who wants to be ripped off, I know I don’t!
When it’s said and
done, you did an amazing job! You worked incredibly hard and you’re
keeping this going. How do you feel about the whole campaign? Do you
have any other plans in the pipeline?
I knew this was going
to be quite a big thing; it’s difficult to comprehend the success
of it. Sometimes I wish I was an outsider looking in to grasp the
hugeness of it all. It would have been amazing for the end result to
include a musical protest and everybody coming together at a truly
fan funded concert, showing that people can come together and drive
change and celebrate success. Who knows, maybe one day that will
happen. We have set up a ticket exchange through our own website
where people can buy sell tickets at face value. The one thing that
drove us to do this is that PayPal UK have recently updated their
terms of protection, protecting people who buy event tickets against
fake tickets and just not receiving them at all. When the Foo
Fighters released their UK dates, we bought as many tickets as
possible to sell on to fans at face value. You got to remember, we as
a fan base are just a drop in the ocean but we will do all we can to
help as many people as possible, regardless of if that’s 1 or 1000.
You can follow the No More Touts campaign (And the Foo Family!) at: www.facebook.com/foofamiluk
And on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/foofamilyuk
You can also use the hashtag #NoMoreTouts
You can read the rest of the No More Touts posts here.
