Jason Manford warned fans after joking that he was reselling his Peter Kay tour tickets for thousands of pounds as the Bolton comedian's live tour went on general sale this morning (Saturday November 12).
The tour is Kay's first in 12 years and will see him play shows across the UK - including 17 dates at the AO Arena in Manchester. A further eight new dates in 2024 were added to the previous nine already announced at AO Arena.
Many fans were left disappointed after they missed out on pre-sale tickets on Thursday due to issues with O2 Priority. But the pre-sale still sold out, ramping up the general sale demand even more.
Read more: LIVE: New dates added for Peter Kay tour as millions join Ticketmaster queues
Tickets for the tour are already being sold for extortionate rates, and Salford comedian Manford responded to a fan this morning asking about it. The original tweet said: "Jase, seriously, you go through all this yourself. Surely the promoters knew the demand that was coming. Why is it so poorly organised?"
And Manford responded: "I don’t know, reselling tickets at a profit should be illegal. Until they do something in parliament then I imagine a lot of ticket sellers hands are tied. But we live in a capitalist society with a Tory government so chances are about the same as you getting Peter Kay tickets!"
It was just after Manford had revealed he managed to bag tickets for himself, tweeting: "Phew lucky enough to get 2x Peter Kay tickets. For sale 2x Peter Kay tickets, £3500 each ono".
@masato_jones quipped: "You got a bargain there!" as @andyhodder responded: "Chuck in manford on support and we can talk".
@HLucyloo seemed keen on the offer, adding: "Ooh yes please ahaha! Number 86000 in the queue aha" as @claireosborne76 negotiated: "Put in a good word with Peter for me, desperate for tickets here it’s gonna be a long day of trying," with laughing-face emojis.
It comes amid reports of people already re-selling tickets for inflated prices on Twitter. Over on the Manchester Evening New's Peter Kay liveblog, Gemma Sherlock recommended: "I really wouldn't buy tickets in this way and I would especially avoid sites like Viagogo.
"Ticketmaster offer their own re-selling service and it's better to get tickets off a reliable site so there isn't likely to be any issues come the performance date, also the price will be fair and as close to the original price as possible."
Fans who were O2 mobile customers or Three mobile members could get early access to tickets on Thursday from 10am but many couldn't even log onto the O2 Priority app. O2 were forced to apologise and stated that they had never seen demand like it and were working around the clock to get the app and website back up and running so fans could get tickets.
The Three+ app reported similar problems during the initial launch but recovered quicker than O2 Priority.
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