The UK government have confirmed plans to enforce a ban on selling secondary tickets on for a profit. Check out what it means for music fans and ticket touts below.
The Labour government announced back in January that they’d be looking to enforce a price cap on how much touts can re-sell tickets for, alongside an official consultation into the industry and controversial ‘dynamic pricing’ practices. This week – after the likes of Radiohead, Sam Fender, Dua Lipa and more lead the call for them to keep their pledge – reports emerged that the government had landed on a plan after a period of consultation.
Today (Wednesday November 19), details have been officially confirmed and announced. New rules will make it illegal to re-sell tickets for live music, sports, comedy and theatre events above original cost – making re-sold gig tickets roughly £37 cheaper on average and collectively saving fans £112million per year. Massive fees from secondary ticket sellers will also be stamped out.
“Finally, we’re here,” Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told NME about the announcement. “We promised when we were elected that it would be time up for ticket touts. It’s a good day.”
Explaining the finer details of what it means for gig-goers, she continued: “People will obviously be able to re-sell their tickets, but not for any more than the price they paid for it. They’ll have to sell it at face value.
“You do get lots of people who later find that they can’t go to a gig or sporting event, and we want to make sure that they can still sell their ticket. They won’t be able to add on any more money than they paid, but they will be able to get their money back.”
Hitting an industry that has often seen large volumes of tickets bought using automated bots online, before being re-listed at hugely inflated prices, Nandy said that new rules would also put a cap on the fees and service charges used by secondary ticket sites to prevent the price limit from being undermined.
Asked how this will be enforced, Nandy revealed: “There will be powers for the CMA [Competition And Markets Authority] to be able to fine platforms up to 10 per cent of their annual income. If they’re not complying, the CMA will intervene and it could result in multi-million pound fines for rogue firms, wherever they’re based in the world.
“If a global business is targeting UK consumers, regardless of where they’re headquartered, the CMA will have the power to be able to find them if they’re not compliant with our laws.”
Before the ban can pass into law, it must first be legislated.
“We’re bringing forward our new legislative session in the King’s Speech, then it’s got to pass both the Houses Of Lords and Parliament to become law,” said Nandy. “We promised that we would do this in our manifesto, and we promised that it was ‘how’ not ‘whether’ we would take action. Once we have passed it, these new laws will come into force.”
The minister said that earlier this week she and her colleagues visited secondary sites to find Radiohead tickets going for 11 times what they were originally being sold at, while World Darts Championship tickets were going for as much as 15 times more. “Put it all together and we estimate that this is going to save fans around £115million per year in total,” she said.
Another huge tour hit by secondary ticketing was Oasis’ ‘Live 25’ reunion run. The Britpop giants partnered with Twickets to encourage that tickets be re-sold only at face value, as well as cancelling hundreds they believed to have been bought by bots and over 50,000 more found on such sites. The tour also invited controversy for the use of dynamic or ‘surge’ pricing used when tickets first went on sale.
While dynamic pricing was also part of the government’s recent live music consultation, Nandy said that this was not being outlawed as the likes of Ticketmaster had made changes around the transparency of pricing.
“We’re not announcing an end to dynamic pricing, but where we have concerns is in making sure that consumers have the right information and the fullest information,” she told NME. “After the debacle around the sale of Oasis tickets where people were going into a queue and then eventually getting to the front to find that the price they thought they were paying was vastly inflated, a number of people find they could no longer afford it.
“We’re not saying that a company wouldn’t be able to use dynamic pricing. What we are saying, and what the CMA has already said, is that people have to have accurate information and ticket descriptions. They have to understand the practices being used to prevent those huge surprises.”
Various artists and industry bodies have spoken out to celebrate the news of the ban on secondary ticketing.
“It’s such great news that the government has stepped up and introduced a price cap on resale tickets – something I’ve been campaigning for alongside O2 and the FanFair Alliance for a long time,” said Bastille frontman Dan Smith. “It’s a good step towards protecting music fans from being ripped off and will allow more genuine fans to see their favourite artists perform at face value prices. I am welcoming a world where there are no more re-sellers snapping up all of the tickets and massively inflating their prices.”
Alt-J also welcomed the news, but said that it was “now imperative that they put these measures into place as quickly as possible”, while Mumford & Sons said that this “going to have a major positive impact, especially on the affordability of getting to see your favourite gigs”
“For years, many of us as artists have been pleading for changes to be made around secondary ticketing. We still feel so passionately about it,” Mumford & Sons added. “Touts and scalpers have run amok and taken advantage of the good will and passion of music fans for many years. This hurts both the fan and the artist, whatever the scale of the shows.
“This regulation will curb the predatory behaviour of these bad actors, often through pseudo-legitimate secondary ticketing systems, whilst preserving the ability for fans to re-sell if plans change.”
Coldplay manager Phil Harvey echoed that “as long as this legislation is brought in quickly, it should be a game-changer that will transform fans’ experience of buying concert tickets”, while Stuart Camp from Ed Sheeran‘s Grumpy Old Management company said he “trusted that this will be implemented without delay”.
“For anyone who cares about music fans and ticket prices, today’s announcement is long overdue,” said Cramp. “We’ve seen first-hand the positive impact of price caps elsewhere in the world, and these proposals have the potential to transform the UK’s live music sector and protect audiences from exploitation.”
Secondary ticket company Viagogo responded to the news earlier this week, protesting that price caps have “repeatedly failed fans” in countries like Ireland and Australia, having “pushed consumers towards social media and unregulated sites, where fraud rates are nearly four times higher than in the UK.”
Viagogo pointed towards “open ticketing” as a solution: “Connecting primary and resale platforms in real time to verify tickets,” their statement read.
“Open ticketing allows the sharing of critical information to identify illegal bot activity and eliminate fraud. It’s the same type of technology that allows people to book flights through airlines or travel sites. Opening the market to greater competition also helps drive prices down as more platforms compete on prices, fees and services.”
Viagogo went on to argue that “open ticketing would challenge the primary monopoly of Live Nation and Ticketmaster as they control 80 per cent of the ‘primary’ ticketing market and are under investigation by the Department of Justice in the US.”