Scarlet Mist
Scarlet Mist is an online ticket exchange which allows people to buy and sell spare tickets for concerts and music festivals at face value. Scarlet Mist was originally set up in April 2003 by anaesthetist Richard Marks, after all 112,500 Glastonbury Festival tickets sold out within 24 hours of going on sale, many of these being bought by touts, purchased with the sole intention of selling them on for a hugely inflated price at a later date. Initially, Scarlet Mist only allowed people to exchange Glastonbury tickets, but after the initial success of Glastonbury 2003 where almost 700 people were able to buy tickets for face value, Scarlet Mist expanded to cover other concerts and festivals.
Unlike other online ticket exchanges such as eBay or viagogo, Scarlet Mist does not charge its users any commissions for using the site. Its slogan is "The Ethical Gig and Ticket Exchange for the UK and Ireland"
As of February 2007, over 15,000 tickets have been exchanged through Scarlet Mist, ranging from large events such as V Festival and Fatboy Slim's Big Beach Boutique 3, to far lesser known artists performing at very small venues. Ironically, Scarlet Mist no longer allows people to exchange tickets for Glastonbury Festival due to their own anti-touting system requiring anybody wishing to enter the festival to provide photo ID that matches the person who initially bought the ticket.This has prevented touts from buying Glastonbury tickets to sell on, but it has also prevented Scarlet Mist from trading them.