David Ball from Stereoboard has written a comprehensive piece on the brouhaha surrounding the recent Alicia Keys concert in London, and AEG's choice to force fans to show ID at the gates that matched their tickets in order to shut down the secondary ticket market.

He called it a fiasco. And is not alone:

On announcing the show it was made known that ticketing for this event would be different to your usual gig. A decision was made that the organisers didn’t want anyone selling their tickets to anyone else so chose to go with a name checking system to avoid touting. This is where the problems began. BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’, a consumer news show hosted by Winnifred Robinson, decided to track the show and whether this system could work. What they found appears to be that it didn’t.

As part of their research, BBC spoke with Seatwave who are one of the leading ticket re-seller’s for people who no longer want or can use their tickets for an up-coming show, designed to give people who missed out on sold-out events the opportunity to get hold of tickets. As discussed in previous features this is a system many people are unhappy with but what can’t be denied is that tickets are sold at whatever market value deems it to be. Take this year's Reading & Leeds festival as an example, tickets are selling for up to 50% less than face value as the demand for tickets is actually lower than expected, therefore giving people who felt they wouldn’t be able to afford to go an opportunity they otherwise wouldn’t have had.

Alfred Branch Jr., from Ticketnews.com also covered the problem:

Dozens of fans, however, were delayed entry and hassled for their ID, according to press reports, and some were turned away from some gates and had to go to other gates in order to get in.

"It was chaotic," Graham Burns, chairman of the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents (ASTA), told TicketNews of the show.

With the show not selling out, organizers ended up eventually relaxing the requirements, which led Cohen and others to question what was the point of the whole exercise? Red Light Management, Keys' management company, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.