Dice introduces ticket refunds

Mobile ticket app Dice has introduced what is believed to be a world first in concert ticketing: refunds for those who can no longer attend.

Announcing the news yesterday, Dice founder Phil Hutcheon said refunds are initially only available for sold-out events (although, he adds, “over 80%” of Dice-ticketed shows sell out) but that the new initiative should benefit buyers and sellers alike: the former “no longer have to scour secondary ticket websites” for sold-out shows, instead adding themselves to a waiting list for returned tickets, and the latter can rest safe in the knowledge they’re not supporting secondary platforms frequented by “speculators and brokers who hoover up […] tickets and immediately resell them”.

It similar to Skiddle’s Cool:Off service, which gives buyers 72 hours to change their minds, although Dice is setting no time limit on its refunds.

Using “machine learning” to assist in pushing that 80% figure closer to 100%, Hutcheon says London-based Dice is hoping to “figure out how to roll out refunds on all [its] events this year.”

“Everyone wins: Fans get tickets at fair prices, venues are packed and artists don’t have to worry about people flogging their tickets for insane prices”

“Everyone wins ,” comments Hutcheon, who says Dice has worked “closely with the industry” on the launch: “Fans get the tickets at fair prices, venues are packed and artists don’t have to worry about people flogging their tickets for insane prices.”

He adds that refunds are “just the start of a flood of new features” on the app, which has carved out a niche in the competitive UK ticket market by selling tickets at face value, with no booking fees and irretrievably tied to the mobile device from which they were bought, making unauthorised or for-profit resale impossible.

It recently became the ticketing partner of 12 small and mid-sized UK venues, including Manchester’s Night and Day Café, the Moth Club in Hackney and Birthdays in Dalston.

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