As expected, a government report into the secondary ticketing market has said the current situation is wrong, wrong, wrong, but has done little to address the situation other than issue a strongly worded message to the ticket touting sector.
As much previously reported, the report from the Culture, Media And Sport Select Committee is the latest investigation into the growth of ticketing touting in the online age, and in particular the resale of tickets via internet auctions website like eBay or those specifically set up for ticket auctions like Viagogo.
The report says that the auction websites, who take a cut when people resell tickets for profit, are currently exploiting music fans, who miss out on tickets from official sources and are then forced to pay hiked up prices on auction sites. The MPs said the resale sector should "clean up their act" with a voluntary code of conduct that properly addressed their concerns. Without naming names, they added that "some secondary sellers indulged in dubious or suspect practices". They also criticised live music promoters for having shoddy returns services which forced legit fans who suddenly couldn't make a gig to resell their tickets via auction sites.
The political types again shied away from introducing new rules like those that exist in the football industry which ban the resale of tickets. Committee chairman John Whittingdale said it was "neither practical nor in the interests of consumers" to ban ticket resales calling instead for a "voluntary solution".
Of course, such a voluntary solution has been called for by ministers and industry types for a while, and even the threat of new laws on the matter if self-regulation can't be achieved isn't new, but the report did have some specific suggestions of what a voluntary code should include - cross-industry agreement on when refunds should be available from legit sources, across-the-board commitment that tickets for free or charity events, like last year's Concert For Diana, should not be resold, and that the live and artist communities should themselves benefit some way from any ticket resales.
A system to achieve the latter point has, as previously reported, already been proposed by the artist management community in the form of a Resale Rights Society, where ticket auction sites are awarded legitimacy from the live sector in return for pledging to pass a portion of their profits back to artists and promoters.
But those proposals have had a lukewarm reception from both the auction sites and the live music promoters. The former generally agree some kind of self-regulation is best (well they would, wouldn't they) though they don't seem to think the RSS proposals are the right kind. Some of the latter also advocate some kind of self-regulation, though some promoters are of the opinion a change in the law that just banned touting altogether would be the better solution all round.
So to conclude, government report or no government report, don't expect any resolution in the secondary ticketing debate anytime soon.