Madonna is endorsing the sell-on of concert tickets, condemned by some concert promoters as scalping or touting, by making two leading companies in the secondary ticket market official partners for her forthcoming tour of North America and Europe – the Financial Times commented after the Sticky & Sweet Tour was announced.

As reported by Live Nation in the press relese for the new show, StubHub will be able to trade tickets for her North American concerts, while Viagogo has been given the rights to be secondary ticket partner in Europe, as well as handling VIP packages and all premium tickets.

“The deals mark a breakthrough for a practice which has been strongly opposed by leading concert promoters in the UK, such as Harvey Goldsmith, but which state politicians in the US and the UK government have rowed back from making illegal”, the FT says.

Secondary ticketing companies enable the public to trade their tickets online with customers who are prepared to pay above their face value. The company takes a cut of about 10 to 15 per cent. Many sports promoters complain that they are not getting any share of the premium on these ticket sales and concert promoters in the UK have pressed unsuccessfully for the government to outlaw the practice.

StubHub declined to discuss the terms of the deal, while Viagogo – that has paid a rights fee to Madonna and Live-Nation – described its deal as similar to the partnership deals it struck with Premier League football clubs.

Eric Baker, chief executive of Viagogo and founder of StubHub, described the deal as “truly groundbreaking” and the first time that a major artist had endorsed secondary ticketing.

The deal allows both StubHub and Viagogo to set up links with Madonna’s website and fanzones and to be included in press releases and promotional material.

While Mr Baker expected Viagogo to make a profit from the Madonna deal, he described the promotional value of the deal as “truly priceless”.

He expected Viagogo to be trading double or treble the number of tickets it would have otherwise exchanged unofficially.

Mr Baker told the Financial Times that the Madonna deal showed that Viagogo and other secondary marketing companies were “here to stay for ever”, adding that they were providing ticketing solutions across the board to artists. StubHub said it was the first partnership with a leading performing artist and an endorsement of the secondary market.

Chuck LaVallee of StubHub described its agreement as a landmark deal, made with a forward-thinking and progressive artist.

“I applaud the Madonna and LiveNation teams for leaping with the industry leader into what will obviously be the future of the concert ticketing industry,” he said.

Will Muirhead of Tixdaq, which monitors secondary ticket sales on websites, said the only previous examples of official endorsements of the market was The Eagles’ partnership with Ticketmaster.

Agents representing performing artists in the UK have been working on a voluntary agreement with secondary ticketing companies to ensure that a share of the profits they make from the exchange of tickets is returned to the artists.

But Mr Baker said the Madonna deal signalled that such an arrangement would become irrelevant if performing artists continued to deal directly with secondary ticketing companies.

From an article by Roger Blitz, The Financial Times.