Arbitrage, buying something explicitly because you know the seller isn’t selling it at market price and you can, could be called parasitic, I suppose. Albeit it’s only parasitic on whatever combination of ignorance/stupidity/pigheadedness prevented the primary seller from selling it at market price in the first place. But arbitrage is still an accepted and even necessary part of free market machinery.

To be fair to the concert promoters, I think they probably would charge market price if they weren’t afraid of the effect it would have on their audience. If they charged £7,000 for a Led Zep concert, the audience would be filled with corporate types closing deals on their mobiles instead of attractive young people jumping up and down. But the current situation still seems to show a serious lack of imagination and willingness to fall back on cheap lawyerin tactics. Why not have differentiated prices – i.e. cheap seats? Let the corporate types stand at the front and fill the rest of the room with not-so-good views with the sweaty masses. It worked in Shakespeare’s day. There’s not much point saying it’s not fair that you have to pay for a view – it’s no more unfair than having it decided by who’s first in line.

You try and buy a £25 ticket 2 seconds after it’s gone on sale for a gig that should take days to sell out and, wow, they’re all gone. But viagogo that instant has a load for sale at £90.

What you’re also finding is half empty venues despite it being a “sell out”. If these companies are snapping up all the tickets and don’t shift half of them, what do they care as the one’s that they’ve sold they’ve sold for a fortune – and they’ve made a tidy profit overall.

Personally, If a gig had sold out and I really wanted to go I’d rather go back to the “a shifty looking guy outside the venue” days.

Part of me says fair play for exploiting a loophole and making a business model that is a great success. However, I’d prefer it if these legalised touts didn’t exist.