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Italian promoters also want touting crackdown

By | Published on Tuesday 25 October 2016

Ticket touts

It’s in fashion isn’t it? Now the main trade group for concert promoters in Italy is getting vocal about ticket touting, declaring that it is opposed to any “unauthorised resale of concert tickets”.

According to IQ, Assomusica, which represents over 100 promoters who between then present around 80% of live shows in Italy, has called on the country’s competition authority to take action on ticket touting, especially on those touts who post “speculative ticket listings”, ie put tickets for sale on secondary sites that they haven’t even secured yet.

The trade association’s announcement follows two consumer groups in Italy urging the same competition authority to investigate the country’s primary and secondary ticketing markets after tickets for two Coldplay shows due to take place in Milan next year sold out in minutes, only to then immediately appear on the resale sites at hiked up prices.

IQ reports that Assomusica supports an outright ban on the resale of tickets except where named secondary agents are authorised to resell them by an event’s promoter. The trade group adds that: “It is the firm belief of our association that urgent legislative measures are necessary to govern the peculiarities of this evolving sector, which is of great socio-economic impact”.

Although online ticket touting has been controversial for over a decade now, opposition to secondary ticketing within the artist and live community does seem to be gaining a new momentum of late, possibly because of the resale market becoming ever more prolific and sophisticated. Campaigning in the UK on this issue is now focused around the previously reported FanFair Alliance.



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