So, I've just been trying to find tickets to see popular play "The Recruiting Officer". It's sold out (the Donmar is a pretty small venue, which doesn't help), but tickets are available on Seatwave from £95 a pop. 


Face value of the tickets on sale is £10. An eyebrow-raising markup, but that premium has been decided by the seller, it's not Seatwave's fault, right? However on top of that, the "booking fee" amounts to a further £30. 


This charge is explained as "Our service charge allows us: To deliver a safe and transparent marketplace, To provide a team of passionate people making sure you receive dedicated customer service and To cover all our fans with our unique protection guarantees". Which sounds a bit self-serving, giving as it's pro-rata'ed according to the resale price dreamt up by the seller. 


 Therefore, as ever, I'm not going to buy from Seatwave - I feel like I'd not only be picking my own pocket and handing the money over to someone I desperately dislike, but also punching myself into the bargain while apologising to the scoundrel for any inconvenience. 


 The amazing thing about Seatwave is not only the degree with which they fleece the purchaser - I guess that's fair enough, if you're willing to pay, you put up with it. Incredibly, they also charge the seller for the privilege (and ensure they jack up the price the seller asks for by saying what they should go for, and what they'll receive...after Seatwave have taken their cut). 


 Ok, maybe I'm just bitter. In a sense they're simply creating a proper secondary market for tickets. However, the supply-and-demand is already taken care of in the initial sale from the theatre, right? 


That's the transaction - any subsequent trading is either a) a ballache for the genuine reseller who now can't go and would just prefer their money back or b) profiteering from people who never intended to go. Seatwave is encouraging people in camp a) to act like people in camp b) by tempting them with how much their tickets are worth now....these aren't investments! 


 I've experienced (at the Young Vic) the pleasant phenomenon of handing tickets back to the box office, which if they'd sold, they would have given my money back. Fair, right? Equally, the Olympics tickets approach of a monopsony for reselling - the secondary market is to the original seller only - is hard to argue with. 


As things become increasingly electronic and integrated (e.g. with Ambassadors Theatre Group, which seems to control most of commercial theatreland already), perhaps this will become the norm...although as long as someone's able to turn a decent margin from exploiting the greed of others, I guess it's going to happen. 


Or I could just join them, I suppose - buy a few cheap tickets for all new openings, and probably a third of the time the show is decent enough to give a 10x (according to Seatwave) return, and I doubt I'd lose money. But God, the thought of that is depressing. Why I'm not richer, I suppose - my noble idea of making money by creating value, rather than finessing it, needs to be held more loosely. 


UPDATE: Since prevaricating over whether to buy these tickets (I haven't), Seatwave have emailed me a 5% discount voucher. Which I'm not going to use. I confess I'm hoping the runaway success of this production will mean it is extended in another theatre, or return to the Donmar in future. That's what's happened with the 2 most successful shows of recent years (Jerusalem and One Man, Two Guv'nors).