Dutch festivals, venues, clubs increasingly handle ticket resales themselves

Saturday, 22 August 2026 - 07:45

More Dutch festivals, clubs, and music venues are launching their own resale platforms for tickets. That way, they can keep control over prices and information provision for those attending, NOS reports after speaking to several of these organizations. External resale platform TicketSwap has noticed the trend.

Music venue Doornroosje in Nijmegen launched its own resale platform in February. “This way you keep ticket sales in your own hands,” Koos Hornman, head of marketing at Doornroosje, told NOS. “We maintain control over the imposed rates, which we deliberately want to keep as low as possible for visitors. After all, the ticket has already been sold; we hardly earn anything from it.

Handling the resale in-house also enables the venue to maintain contact with visitors more easily. Ticket buyers must leave their details via an account, making it clear to the music venue who is attending. “This reduces the risk of fraud and makes it safer for visitors.” Visitors can also contact Doornroosje directly with ticket-related questions.

The Into The Great Wide Open festival, which takes place on Vlieland on the last weekend of August, launched its own resale platform two years ago, primarily to combat exorbitant prices. At the time, you couldn’t set a maximum price on Ticketswap, director Douwe Luijnenburg told NOS. “We didn’t want people to be able to make a lot of money from the scarcity of the number of tickets we have available.” The independent festival can only accommodate 6,000 visitors.

If you’re too late for a ticket, you sign up for the waiting list. If someone else cancels their ticket, the first person in line gets a chance to buy it. The resale platform opens over a month before the festival. “A festival is expensive enough these days. No one benefits if ticket prices are driven up further, not even us as an organization. We try to keep prices as low as possible,” Luijenburg said.

Dekmantel, the organizer behind festivals like Dekmantel in the Amsterdamse Bos and Selectors in Tisno, Croatia, also has its own resale platform. Selling and buying tickets via TicketSwap still happens, but not much, a spokesperson told the broadcaster. They called maintaining their own resale platform the logical step. “As an independent music platform, we handle as much as possible in-house.”

In-house resale platforms are also increasingly common within the nightlife scene.

TicketSwap told NOS that it has noticed this trend. “We understand very well why organizers want more control.” To respond to this trend, TicketSwap introduced a model in May last year that gives organizers more influence over resale via TicketSwap and more insight into who buys a ticket. Organizers can also set a floor price to prevent visitors from waiting until the very last moment to buy their ticket, hoping for a better deal.