According to a recent article in Billboard, Brussels concert venue Ancienne Belgique (AB) is about to launch a ticket exchange for fans to sell and buy tickets in order to 'combat' the secondary ticket market in Belgium.  According to the venue management,  approximately 10,000 tickets per year for AB concerts circulate on auction sites - and they want to get that business back.

"We cannot start controlling people at the gates or implement repressive action without a legal backbone," van Riel said in the Billboard.biz article.

"We try to identify the ticket re-sellers and withdraw the [order for those] specific tickets from our advance sales [system]. We have also launched a Web platform where people who bought [surplus] tickets can offer them for sale on our own AB Web site, where we have control of the activities."

The Belgian government is currently in talks on legislation and measures to take on the Secondary Ticketing Market, and the legislation is due to be finalized by February 2010.

While the wait is on, AB is creating it's own secondary marketplace for concerts. Suspected secondary brokers who buy online during advance sales periods will have their credit cards blocked to prevent purchase, or it's possible that ticket orders will be deleted on the system and the buyer refunded.

There's no mention whether or not tickets can or will be marked up in the new marketplace. 

Read the full article here.