According to Music Week, the government might be about to start a consultation on the secondary ticketing market, which will be led by Minister For Sport Gerry Sutcliffe and which will look into all the various issues around the growth of ticket touting since the boom of online auction and resale websites.
Secondary ticketing has been the big controversy in the live music industry for a while now, of course, with many artist managers and gig promoters, and some consumer groups, hitting out at the increasing number of tickets for in-demand events that are sold for profit on websites like eBay, or ticket resale specific sites like Get Me In and Viagogo. The profits, of course, go to the reseller (with the resale website taking a commission) and not the artist or promoter.
It's not the first time the government has bothered itself about the growth of secondary ticketing. It initially told the live music sector to sort it out, threatening to introduce new laws governing ticket selling if they didn't.
The live music sector promptly responded by saying that there was little it could do, while adding that it would welcome new laws to restrict touting. The government responding by doing very little, even when a Parliamentary Select Committee published a report making various recommendations about what should be done.
The government is possibly acting now because of those various incidents last year when punters lost money buying tickets off rogue websites that not only weren't official primary sellers but which hadn't actually got any tickets to resell on the secondary market either.
With that in mind, the government's review is likely to concentrate more on how to protect the consumer in the resale market rather than the live industry's bigger gripe, that none of the profits of resales go to artists or promoters.
As previously reported, the artist management community once proposed a solution to address both issues - it proposed sites like Get Me In and Viagogo sign up to a music-industry-led code, and agree to pay a share of their profits to a fund for artists and promoters. In return the industry pledged to "officially sanction" participating sites, giving them more legitimacy.
The proposals were smiled upon by many in the live music sector, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, were not welcomed by the resale sites who weren't keen on sharing their profits, and who reckoned they could protect consumers and gain legitimacy through their own trade body, the Association Of Secondary Ticket Agents.
The fact major primary ticketing companies like Ticketmaster have since entered the secondary ticketing sector, in the UK by buying Get Me In, also arguably gives the non-dodgy resellers more legitimacy.
Insiders say that, despite plans for a new review, the government still prefers a voluntary solution to protect consumers, rather than coming through on those threats/promises of legislation to control touting. With that in mind, while the review may provide some extra protection to consumers, it is unlikely to address many of the live sector's grievances.