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MPs recommend investigation of “far-ranging and disturbing factors” in ticketing market

By | Published on Thursday 17 November 2016

Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Ticket Abuse

MPs have recommended further investigation of the ticketing market after that hearing on online ticket touting before the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee in Parliament on Tuesday uncovered “far-ranging and disturbing factors” about current practices.

The select committee hearing followed Nigel Adams MP’s proposal of an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill banning the use of ‘bots’ by touts to hoover up large amounts of tickets before genuine fans can get to them on primary sites. Adams then agreed to retract that proposal after the government committed to instigate a meeting to assess whether such bots actually already contravene the Computer Misuse Act, though the culture committee now plans to propose a similar DEB amendment itself.

Reps from two of the big secondary ticketing firms were called in for yesterday’s meeting, while artist and management representatives spoke out against touting and the conduct of the ticket resale platforms. As previously reported, although the secondary sites represented at the meeting argued that they were doing nothing wrong themselves, Damian Collins MP accused Ticketmaster’s Chris Edmonds of being “extraordinarily complacent” and dubbed his defence of his company’s various resale sites “extremely unsatisfactory”.

In a statement following the session issued yesterday, the select committee said that while the initial focus of this week’s meeting was the “distortion of the ticketing markets” through the use of bots, “the evidence session has shed a light on much more far-ranging and disturbing factors in the market, including clear indications of too close relationships between those selling tickets on the primary market and sellers on the secondary market”.

It continued: “Witnesses’ failure to give satisfactory answers to the committee’s questions about where companies’ main profits are made, the possibility of even Chinese walls between parts of the same company, and the willingness of the ticket selling companies to even try to identify, let alone bar, large-scale ticket touts and fraudulent sellers have led us to conclude that a fuller investigation of the whole area of ticketing is needed”.

“The Secretary Of State is holding a round table on this area at the end of the month”, it said, moving onto its next steps, and referencing the aforementioned bots-focused meeting that has been called by Culture Secretary Karen Bradley.

“We will decide how best to take the issues forward once we know the outcome of this”, the committee added, “and in light of the conclusion of a Competition And Markets Authority investigation, expected shortly, into whether ticket companies are complying with the law. In the meantime, we will be writing to the Secretary Of State urging her to study the evidence given to us about the under-reporting of income by known touts and to raise this with HMRC as an area which warrants their investigation”.

While it was unhappy with much of the evidence given by the secondary sites on Tuesday, the committee noted that one area where there was unanimous agreement on both sides of the debate was that bots are no good. Therefore, that aforementioned new amendment to the Digital Economy Bill seeking to ban said bots will be tabled later this month.

Commenting on the outcome of the hearing, anti-tout group the FanFair Alliance said: “This is fantastic news for all UK music fans and those who have campaigned so long for action. Yesterday, the dysfunctional market and bad practices of the big four secondary ticketing websites were laid bare before members of the Culture, Media & Sport Committee. We anticipate that a fuller investigation of this market will lead to much-needed reform”.

“The FanFair Alliance fully supports further actions into the fraudulent activities of online ticket touts and the industrial abuse of this market, as well as an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill to ban the misuse of bots”, it added.

Watch the select committee session in full here.



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