Touts selling inflated Belladrum tickets slammed

Revellers at Belladrum Tartan Heart festival. Picture: Tony Marsh

• Belladrum promoters have slammed ticket touts after tickets selling for nearly double the price discovered on eBay

• Sellers offering tickets at £175, £80 over the face value, condemned by organisers

Camping tickets for the festival, held on August 2 and 3, have been sold out since Tuesday and cost £95.

Promoters were notified of the inflated ticket prices when reports of briefs costing up to £175 went on sale on eBay.

Joe Gibbs, promoter of Belladrum, said: “There are many dissapointed Bella fans clamouring on social networks, telephone and e-mail who didn’t get their tickets in time. It is very dissapointing to see touts buying up tickets to profit in this way at the expense of genuine music and festival lovers.”

The festival sold out its 15,800 capacity for the fifth year running as Scotland’s more established festivals have been hit by the economic downturn.

Touts have since been issued a warning for breaching the festival’s terms and conditions in a statement.

It said: “Touts trying to make a turn on Bella tickets are breaking the terms and conditions of the printed tickets which state that they can only be exchanged at face value via the Ticket Trust, an ethical ticketing exchange set up by Radiohead and others.

“This site ensures that buyers actually receive genuine tickets to the event and that they are bought and sold at face value.”

The festival is held at Belladrum Estate, near Beauly. James, The Horrors and Glasgow band Twin Atlantic are among the festival’s headliners.