One Tout Holds £1m of U2 Tickets on StubHub, Raising ‘Bot’ Questions

A fresh row has erupted in Britain over tickets for Irish band U2's 2027 tour. A single professional ticket tout has advertised more than £1m worth of tickets for resale through the website StubHub.

The four-night London leg of The Greatest Show on Earth tour will be staged at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Seats sold out last week, shortly after going on sale.

StubHub listings show the tout offered more than 1,800 tickets for one night alone, and more than 2,000 in total, despite strict limits on how many tickets each buyer may purchase.

Vladyslav Skrypka, who claims to be based in Harlow, Essex, priced some tickets at more than four times face value. If all his tickets sell at the listed sums, he would make more than £1m.

A snapshot of StubHub's listings taken this week showed 7,819 U2 tickets advertised for resale. Only 562 came from private sellers such as fans; thousands more were in the hands of professional traders.

Artists and music industry figures are calling on Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to deliver plans she outlined a year ago to “shut down the touts' racket” by outlawing resale for profit.

A bill to ban ticket touting is due to be published during the current parliamentary session, which may not end until well into 2027.

Using “bot” software to scoop up tickets has been illegal since 2018. Adam Webb of the industry-backed FanFair Alliance said the sheer volume of U2 tickets on StubHub indicated either bot use or “speculative selling” — agreeing a sale first and hoping to obtain tickets later — which is also illegal.

In a BBC interview last week, StubHub International's chief executive, Bob Kupbens, said: “We don't support bots and we'd love for both the government and primary to do a better job of policing that to make sure those kinds of things don't happen.”

Webb asked whether StubHub had seen evidence of Skrypka's receipts, and whether it was concerned the tickets may have been acquired using the very technology Kupbens publicly deplores.

StubHub did not address specific questions about the listings or possible bot use. The company said it does not allow speculative selling and that sellers must confirm they own, or have a right to, the tickets they list. A spokesperson said the firm is firmly against bots, which are used at the point of primary sale, and called for stronger enforcement at source.

Ticketmaster disputed that primary agents are responsible for bots, saying it blocks 20 billion bots a month and spends millions doing so. It said resale sites such as Viagogo and StubHub create the incentive for bot use.

A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the government is fully committed to stamping out ticket touting for good and will bring forward legislation in this parliament. U2 was approached for comment, and messages to social media pages believed to belong to Skrypka went unanswered.