‘The Wolves of Gower Street': Why Scala ticket resellers need to be stopped
Courtesy of James Petts (Flickr)
On November 15th 2022, the first release of tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour marked an unprecedented frenzy. Fans scrambling for access codes, hours of virtual queues and, most notably, extortionate resell prices. Almost a year has passed and the resellers have now moved on to a new target: UCL students. Every Wednesday, TeamUCL hosts their infamous Sports Night at Scala, a local clubbing venue. The popular event often sells out and, as a result, Bloomsbury campus is transformed into a busy marketplace each week. The panicked search from the ticketless has created an opportunity for the more enterprising students to earn a little extra cash. Or to put it bluntly: to rip off their coursemates. It appears that Scala-mania is on the rise, and the ambitious ‘Wolves of Gower Street’ have spotted the business venture that will earn them their fortune. It’s only a matter of time before, like Ticketmaster, the SU website crashes too.
If you haven’t been to a Scala Sports Night, you will have heard the stories. In 2021, the King’s Cross nightclub opened its doors to UCL students, warmly welcoming those both part of a sports team and not. Even crowned by enthusiastic students as ‘the best night out in London’, the relatively new event has become the perfect place for UCL students to spend their Wednesday nights, with a guaranteed UCL demographic, fun atmosphere and – most importantly – affordable prices. That is until now.
The tickets for Sports Night are officially sold on UCL’s Student’s Union website, ranging from £3-£6. However, the amount which students now have to pay is much higher, as an influx in bulk-buyers intending to resell tickets has forced prices as high as £30 to become the norm. Their scheme is anonymous, starting under the guise of an unnamed user in an old, overcrowded WhatsApp group chat. As the leadup to the night begins, they make a sketchy announcement that they are ‘Selling Scala’, knowing that this is when students will be at their most vulnerable and most willing to excessively spend. A prospective customer may attempt a brief (and ultimately pointless) negotiation with the reseller, but usually the deal is quickly sealed with an impulsive PayPal transfer into the abyss. A buyer’s only compensation is the hope that the mysterious barcode that pops up on their phone is authentic.
A clear example of this chain of events was the recent Scala Halloween Special on 25th November. In this understandably popular week, I witnessed several of my friends pay £30 for their Scala entry, a price ten times the cost of mine. With this unbelievable inflation, either the fear of missing out on the fancy-dress celebration got the better of them, or Taylor Swift herself must have been making a guest appearance. One fellow student even justified the expense with “It’s fine, I’ll just have a cheaper dinner tonight to make up for it.” Would the upcoming night really be worth a sacrifice in food quality? I’ll let you decide.
We’ve all heard about the cost-of-living crisis, and students are by no means exempt. A government survey this year showed that 92% students are worried about rising costs, whilst almost half (49%) feel they have financial difficulties. On top of that, living in the UK’s capital city unsurprisingly brings added financial pressure. For instance, on the topic of nightlife, events in London are rarely advertised for less than £15. Not to mention the extra spent on a £12 vodka shot (NOT bottle) inside that makes opening your mobile banking the following morning all the more painful. In the face of such expense, even when just trying to unwind, the last thing students need is another budget-friendly option being robbed from them.
So how can we solve the problem? How can sports night be reclaimed? One way is by creating a platform mirroring that of Ticketmaster Resale, for example a SU-controlled space which regulates prices. An even simpler approach would be capping the number of tickets which can be bought per student on both the Student Union site and Fatsoma. The purpose of a student night is affordability and inclusivity, yet through the ‘enterprise’ of reselling, it is losing its magic. Scala-mania might be growing, but that doesn’t mean the ‘Wolves of Gower Street’ should too.