This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Live Business
Ticketbis says its research shows Italians approved of ticket reselling
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 31 January 2017
Hey everybody, nearly two thirds of all Italians think ticket touting is the business. As far as they’re all concerned, the reselling of tickets at hiked up prices on shady website is eccellente! Meraviglioso! Favoloso! Eccezionale! Fantastico! Magnifico! And other adjectives Google may or may not have correctly translated.
How do we know this? Because of some new research which was very kindly commissioned by the not-at-all-biased dudes over at Ticketbis, the secondary ticketing platform that was bought by eBay’s StubHub last year. The ticket resale firm hired research company Apco Insight to do the questioning.
The survey focused on whether or not consumers felt that tickets were products they owned and could therefore resell – that being one element of the secondary ticketing debate, the counter view being that tickets are actually contracts between promoters and fans, which usually include a term that says the contract becomes void if transferred to another party.
According to IQ, it was that question to which nearly two thirds of respondents answered in the affirmative, with 63% saying that they considered a ticket to be a product they owned once money had changed hands, with 51% adding that they should then have the right to resell tickets they own after purchase.
Presumably Apco Insight didn’t ask those it was surveying whether they would prefer to buy a ticket off a primary seller at face value, or off a tout who bought up half the tickets as they went on sale at three times that price. But the survey did ask about usage of resale platforms, finding that just over a quarter of respondents had used a secondary ticketing site to access tickets to sold out events, with the number of users going up for those under 34.
Ticketbis was asking questions of Italian ticket-buyers following moves in Italy late last year to basically ban ticket touting, so that only promoters and their approved ticket agents can sell tickets to events. Though the new rules should still allow some low-key reselling by individuals who genuinely buy a ticket intending to go to a show and then can’t attend.
Commenting on his survey, Ticketbis CEO Ander Michelena said that the research proved that Italian lawmakers were wrong to rush through “hastily” produced anti-touting rules. He told reporters: “As this research shows, the resale of tickets is a complex issue that needs to be understood in all its aspects. The legislation promoted by the Ministry Of Culture was a hasty decision which will push the resale of tickets to the black market”.
He concluded: “We encourage policymakers to make every necessary step to correct regulation that will be harmful for Italian consumers while creating a climate of mistrust for start-ups and those working in the tech sector”.
