[armadillo]

Well-spotted! There's currently11 circle seats leftfor the matinee (presumably a school party cancelled) so hurry!

[Alnoor]

Thankyou.
I got a ticket!!

Alnoor

[armadillo]

Quite a few of these have ended up on Ebay though I notice that several Othello auctions have ended early. Are Ambassadors/the Donmar putting pressure on sellers I wonder (or are people making offers the sellers can't refuse?). I assume the Donmar can't actually do anything against touts as they can't make people prove they bought their tickets legitimately since presumably a lot of people paid cash at the box office.

[josh]

Quite a few of these have ended up on Ebay though I notice that several Othello auctions have ended early. Are Ambassadors/the Donmar putting pressure on sellers I wonder (or are people making offers the sellers can't refuse?).

They are.
Not that I tried to auction my spare Othello tickets on ebay and the Donmar told me off or anything.

[armadillo]

But surely they can't do anything? Unless you've given the seat numbers they can't match them with the sale I assume and even if they could, they surely can't cancel tickets for the buyer. I wonder why they're so concerned - there aren't that many tickets on eBay so it hardly seems worth their while bothering. They don't make extra money if the tickets are returned and there isn't much they can do to stop resales entirely. Especially as the tickets make it clear they can't be returned. I'm not hugely in favour of people who buy for resale but box offices do like to have it all their own way - for 90% of productions, the Donmar won't do returns, and for this one production they expect people to waste spare tickets (or are they doing returns for this one?). They (and other box offices) should be more consistent.

[Lynette]

While we are on this topic, has anyone a spare ticket for Saturday 22nd December, evening performance? I have posted on the tix exchange with my email address so look there if you have , please. I have my allocated 4 tix - I actually thought I had only three but obviously I am cuter than I thought I was and did get 4 but my other daugther wants to come too ....family harmony at stake here.
Josh you are wicked if you didn't offer your spare tix here, so I think you are joking. I expect they'll make a film of the production or something or transfer to a huge venue and then we will all look silly.

[josh]

But surely they can't do anything? Unless you've given the seat numbers they can't match them with the sale I assume and even if they could, they surely can't cancel tickets for the buyer. I wonder why they're so concerned - there aren't that many tickets on eBay so it hardly seems worth their while bothering. They don't make extra money if the tickets are returned and there isn't much they can do to stop resales entirely. Especially as the tickets make it clear they can't be returned.

They are crafty.


And they told me that for this production only, I could return the tickets to the box office! "Because this is such a popular production." So you're right about them trying to have it their way.

[Samantha]

So it seems the Donmar can't win. If they were doing nothing about touts/ebay etc we would all be complaining, they seem to be to me trying to ensure that genuine theatre fans have the tickets. Lets face it, Othello is a special production and they could easily have hiked prices up themselves. I'd have happily paid £50 but they've priced the production very reasonably.
I say good on them for taking a stand.

[Backdrifter]

I'm more with Samantha on this. Yes any action taken on ebay sales will be hard on ticketholders who genuinely find they can't make that date having intended to go, but there will almost certainly be those who bought simply in order to resell at profit and who have deprived theatregoers of getting those tickets at face value. On balance I'm in favour of ebay ticket resales being cancelled. I once got to go to a sold-out Radiohead gig at a small venue after the band cancelled the sales of tickets that had immediately gone on sale on ebay and had so clearly been bought by people who had no intetion of going to the shows, and put them back on their own website.