Tout Offers £1m of U2 Tickets on StubHub as Fans Miss Out
One seller has listed more than 2,000 tickets for U2's 2027 London shows on StubHub, worth over £1m if every seat sells at the asking price. Industry figures say the listings raise questions about bot use, and want the government to ban resale for profit.
A tout is offering more than £1m of tickets for U2's 2027 London concerts on the resale site StubHub, according to listings seen this week. The four-night London leg of the band's The Greatest Show on Earth tour sold out last week, shortly after going on sale.
Fans chasing seats appear to have been beaten to the punch by prolific resellers charging steep mark-ups.
One seller, thousands of seats
StubHub listings for the gigs at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium show more than 2,000 tickets held by a single seller. That is despite strict limits on how many tickets each buyer can purchase.
The seller, Vladyslav Skrypka, who claims to be based in Harlow, Essex, advertised more than 1,800 tickets for one night alone. Some were priced at more than four times face value. If every ticket sold at the listed price, he would make more than £1m.
A snapshot of StubHub taken this week showed 7,819 U2 tickets advertised for resale. More than 2,000 belonged to Skrypka, and thousands more sat with other professional traders, an industry term for sellers who move more than 100 tickets a year. Only 562 came from private sellers, such as fans who can no longer attend.
Bots and speculative selling
Using bots to buy tickets has been illegal since 2018. Adam Webb of the music industry-backed campaign group FanFair Alliance said the volume of listings pointed either to bot use or to "speculative selling", where touts agree a sale first and hope to obtain tickets later. That practice is also illegal.
Webb asked: "StubHub claims all their orders come 100% guaranteed but have they seen evidence of Vladyslav's receipts?"
StubHub International chief executive Bob Kupbens said in an interview last week: "We don't support bots and we'd love for both the government and primary to do a better job of policing that." Primary sellers are the agents that first put tickets on sale.
StubHub, owned by the US investment group Digital Fuel Capital, did not answer specific questions about the listings or possible bot use. It said it does not allow speculative selling and that sellers must confirm they own, or have a right to, the tickets they list.
A spokesperson said bots are used at the point of primary sale and called for stronger enforcement at source.
Ticketmaster disputed that it and other primary agents are responsible. It said it blocks 20bn bots a month and spends millions doing so, and argued that resale sites such as Viagogo and StubHub create the incentive for bot use.
Pressure on the government
Artists and industry figures are urging Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to act on plans she outlined a year ago to shut down the touts' racket by outlawing resale for profit. A ticket tout ban bill is due during the current parliamentary session, which might not end until well into 2027.
A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson said: "We are fully committed to stamping out ticket touting for good." The department said it is bringing forward legislation in this parliament.
