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FanFair and MMF launch guide to combatting ticket touts

By | Published on Wednesday 14 September 2016

FanFair

The previously reported anti-ticket-touting FanFair Alliance and the Music Managers Forum have launched a new guide for artist managers to combat secondary ticketing. Titled ‘#ToutsOut’, the report provides tips and case studies on ensuring that fans are able to purchase tickets for gigs from primary sources or at face value on the resale market.

Speaking at the launch of the report, Mumford & Sons manager and FanFair co-founder Adam Tudhope said: “When we launched FanFair in July of this year, we encouraged managers, agents, promoters and others in the live music business to continue to innovate to ensure our artists’ tickets reach their intended audience at the right price. We all know that this is a huge challenge. We are operating within a dysfunctional market, where the abuse of unregulated ticket resale websites is out of control”.

“However”, he continued, “while we wait for government to act, it is essential that managers and music businesses develop ticketing strategies that aim to disrupt the touts and help fans. This guide marks a first step towards that goal”.

Among the tips for artists and managers seeking to reduce the number of tickets snapped up by the touts are: printing names on tickets and making buyers aware of restrictions on reselling tickets in advance of their purchase; working with ticketing services that actively work against touts; and simply making sure all promoters, agents and primary ticketing services involved in a show or tour are aware that you want to keep tickets off the secondary market.

With regard to working with anti-touting ticket agents, it was also announced that a number of ticketing platforms have now signed the FanFair Declaration to take a stand against industrial scale touting. Joining the numerous artists and industry bodies that have already signed up are Active Ticketing, Dice, Music Glue, Pledge Music, Scarlet Mist, Songkick, Twickets and WeGotTickets.

On this, ATC Management’s Brian Message said: “In direct contrast to the backward-looking and parasitical secondary resale websites, it is exciting that the UK has produced such a vibrant, entrepreneurial and competitive market of next-generation ticketing and D2C businesses. Music managers have been working with the majority of these services for a number of years. As well as sharing FanFair’s repugnance of mass online ticket touting, all are committed to ensuring the live music sector operates more fairly for artists and for fans. We are delighted to have them under the FanFair umbrella”.

Also lending his support to the FanFair Alliance’s ongoing campaign yesterday was Nigel Adams MP, who is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group For Music. He said in a statement: “It is of paramount importance that we protect performer’s rights to set the prices for their own tickets and make certain that we put fans first. While genuine fans must be enabled to resell tickets they can’t use to recoup their outlay, no artist wants to perform to empty seats because touts snapped up tickets and jacked up prices. It erodes the relationship between artists and fans when an artist tries to set accessible prices, rather than milking every possible penny, and then touts ruin this”.

Read Adams’ full statement here, and download the ‘#ToutsOut’ guide here.



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