£99 for a ticket plus £25 for an autograph OR a photograph. That’s what BBC Worldwide expect Doctor Who fans to pay at next year’s official fan convention.
How can the BBC justify such a high cost to meet the publicly paid creative team behind a publicly owned show?
Because they’ll easily find 3,000 hardcore fans to pay up – unlike with Licence Fee payers, the BBC has never needed to employ an army of aggressive collection agents to part Doctor Who fans from their money.
But just because some people are daft enough to pay £120 – almost an entire year’s Licence Fee – to meet an actor or writer and get their autograph, doesn’t mean it’s right to charge it.
The phrase ‘rip-off’ has been seen around the web and I can’t say I’m surprised.
Even the hardcore Sci-Fans fans who hang out at SFX and fan sites baulk at the price.
Unless the BBC has forgotten to tell us that the £99 ticket price entitles you to bring the entire street with you, the cost will exclude most families.
The event threatens to dent the goodwill of legions of fans and risks badly backfiring on the BBC. Part of me that hopes it does exactly that – there’s more than whiff of greed in the air.
Given BBC Watchdog’s own complaints about such things, presumably Worldwide will at least take steps to ensure tickets aren’t re-sold for inflated markups by ‘second market’ ticket sites?