When Splendour In The Grass dropped their lineup last month, many fans instantly realised that tickets to this year’s festival were going to sell out, and that they might be forced to hand their hard-earned cash over to a scalper to ensure a spot in the crowd. While Splendour organisers did announce an official resale channel for tickets, this facility has since come under fire, with punters accusing the festival of ripping them off.

While relentless discussion has arisen in the recent months and years about the dodgy nature of secondary ticket sale platforms, such as Viagogo, Aussie music fans were understandably relieved to learn that Splendour In The Grass’ organisers had once again taken the initiative of sorting out an official ticket resale option for punters who would be unable to attend the festival.

“It’s also incredibly important to us in the current landscape of ticket scalping and the evolution of the unauthorised secondary ticket market, that we can once again offer those who missed out on tickets today with a second chance through moshtix’s authorised Resale facility,” explained Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco last month.

“For many years now, the platform has allowed us to minimise the potential for scalping and ensure that our true fans are treated fairly and given the best opportunity to secure tickets. Our message to everyone who missed out today is to only buy tickets through the moshtix resale platform – don’t buy tickets through unauthorized platforms like Viagogo or your tickets will not be accepted at the gate.”

However, last night’s episode of triple j’s Hack saw the festival coming under fire for supposedly jacking up the prices of resale fees, and “basically scamming everyone that wants to go to Splendour.”

With the resale facility going live last week, users of the service have since discovered that the fees for buying a ticket had basically doubled from last year, raising the flat fee of $20 to %10 of the total ticket price, or $39.90 to buy a three-day pass.

Likewise, ticket sellers also reported they felt they were being taken advantage of, with the admin fee for sellers rising from $20 to $30, in addition to the cost of their booking fee. This is of course in stark contrast to the fees charged by Groovin The Moo, who also utilise Moshtix for their resale channel, but charge only $6 to change the name on a ticket, with no cost added to resell or buy a secondary ticket.

Hack also noted that folks wishing to sell camping tickets to the festival would be even worse off, since those are sold separately to regular tickets. As they explained, “If someone needs to sell their 3 day ticket and their camping ticket, they’ll lose $84.57. That’s $60 (2 x resale admin fees) + $15.94 (3 day ticket booking fee) + $8.63 (camping ticket booking fee).” Needless to say, that’s quite a bit just to sell a ticket.

Splendour In The Grass’ Jessica Ducrou defended their fees, explaining to Hack that the festival hardly makes any money off of these raised fees, and that they only exist in order to help cover their administration costs.

“There are hard costs associated with being able to offer the resale facility – tech development, administration, labour and ongoing management, a huge amount of inquiries, complications,” she explained.

“I know there’s suggestions that we’re making a bunch of money out of this, and yes we’re a business and we do need to make money from the event, but we’re definitely not retiring off this resale.”

“It’s not a huge revenue generator at all.”

“There’s incredible demand for tickets. If we didn’t have the resale facility in place, we would find them on the market for thousands and thousands of dollars.”

Check out Splendour In The Grass headliner Kendrick Lamar’s ‘HUMBLE.’:

Splendour In The Grass 2018 lineup:

Kendrick Lamar

Lorde (only AUS show)

Vampire Weekend (only AUS show)

Khalid (only AUS show)

The Wombats

Hilltop Hoods

CHVRCHES

Miguel

Girl Talk (only AUS show)

Angus & Julia Stone

Gang of Youths

Franz Ferdinand

MGMT

Ben Howard

Dune Rats & Friends

James Bay

PNAU

Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite

The Avalanches DJ set

Chromeo

DMA’S

Ball Park Music

Henry Rollins (only AUS show)

SAFIA

The Jungle Giants

Lil Xan

Methyl Ethel

Amy Shark

The Bronx

Ocean Alley

Carmada (L D R U & Yahtzel)

DZ Deathrays

Lord Huron

Middle Kids

Hockey Dad

Towkio

Cub Sport

Touch Sensitive

Sampa The Great

Dean Lewis

Skegss

Albert Hammond Jr

Mallrat

Marmozets

Alex Lahey

Riton & Kah-Lo

Jack River

Superorganism

Anna Lunoe

Lewis Capaldi

All Our Exes Live In Texas

Alex The Astronaut

Yungblud

Crooked Colours

Nina Las Vegas

Soccer Mommy (only AUS show)

Elderbrook

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

Tim Sweeney

Stella Donnelly

Bully

Baker Boy

Wafia

No Mono

Waax

Angie McMahon

West Thebarton

Eves Karydas

G Flip

The Babe Rainbow

Haiku Hands

Didirri

Alice Ivy

Amyl & The Sniffers

Ziggy Ramo

Fantastic Man

Lo’99

Human Movement

Manu Crook$

Kasbo

Madam X

Andras

Alta

Ara Koufax

Two People

B Wise

Made In Paris

Jensen Interceptor

Woodes

Teischa

Antony & Cleopatra

Muto

Elk Road

triple j Unearthed winners (TBA)

Plus…

Mike Gurrieri

Love Deluxe

Lauren Hansom

Poolclvb

Godlands

Nyxen

Emma Stevenson

Ebony Boadu

Friday, July 20th – Sunday, July 22nd

North Byron Parklands, Byron Bay, NSW

The article was originally published on The Industry Observer