The Black-Market Eurovision

The German television network ARD is reporting further irregularities in the sale of tickets to the Final of Eurovision 2009 in Moscow - see www.eurovision.de (unofficial translation here ).

On the first day of ticket sales long queues formed at the ticket booths. However black-market ticket dealers were overtly avoiding the eight tickets per person rule by purchasing one allotment of eight tickets and then joining the queue again near the front thanks to "friends" of theirs conveniently waiting in line.

This led to the rear parts of the queue hardly moving at all before tickets were sold out altogether, with many reminded of shortages during the darkest Soviet times. The official Eurovision website www.eurovision.tv is still advertising tickets, but clicking on the link leads to a website where all the events are listed in Cyrillic but no tickets to the final are available.

Here at the Eurovision Minute office we were successful in ordering tickets for the Eurovision via the website, or so we thought, even receiving a confirmation by email from the uniscom.ru website with the seat numbers. However this was followed shortly afterwards by another email from an anonymous gmail account informing us that our ticket booking had been cancelled as "by Company conditions we realize delivery within Europe only".

For many fans in Australia the only way to get to the 2009 Eurovision will be via the black market, however the high number of forged tickets in circulation makes this a particularly risky proposition. Given the additional visa problems of arranging a visit to Moscow, this may be a contest to watch back home on SBS.