Britain Braces For Summer Festivals

As the UK outdoor season approaches, the rapidly growing number of warnings about touts, fake tickets and organised crime gangs raises the question of exactly what sort of summer the British festival organisers are expecting.

The latest comes from London-based Festival Republic, which stages Reading, Leeds and Latitude festivals and helps run Glastonbury. The message concerns tickets being sold online.

Melvin Benn’s company, which is co-owned by Live Nation and Irish promoter Denis Desmond, has reportedly shut down two phishing fan pages on social network sites. Each claimed to offer free Reading tickets to anyone who gave away their e-mail address and other personal information.

Many of the people behind the rogue sites that sold an estimated £10 million worth of fake tickets in 2008 are under police investigation, but that hasn’t led to any complacency among the organisers of the UK’s major festivals.

In October, The UK Festival Conference that Steve Jenner bolted on to his organisation’s UK Festival Awards spent much of its time dealing with the subject of forged or non-existent tickets.

Reg Walker of Iridium Consultancy, one of the music industry’s foremost security experts, warned delegates that he has evidence that fraudsters are planning to target this summer’s festivals by swamping the market with highly convincing fake wristbands.

In May, Benn set up a second national crime conference to enable festival organisers to build on what they’d learned at the inaugural conference in 2009.

“Organised crime is a real concern for the festival industry and it’s crucial that we keep the momentum going on these initiatives,” he explained.

Festival Republic is now repeating earlier warnings that customers searching online for tickets to Reading or Leeds should use only official websites and partners that have been authorised and listed on the festival websites.

It’s also set up an information line for festivalgoers who still aren’t sure whether a site is official.

Glastonbury organisers have recently insisted that festivalgoers bring not just their ticket, but plenty of ID.