Consumer rights group Which? and the music industry have called on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ensure that a Ticketing Bill banning for-profit ticket touting is included in next month’s Kings Speech, which will set out the government’s legislative agenda for the year ahead.
Starmer’s Labour Party promised to crack down on for-profit ticket touting ahead of the 2024 General Election. Ministers then announced plans last November to introduce a new law basically banning for-profit touting, so that tickets can only be resold at face value with a capped additional admin fee. That announcement was widely welcomed by consumer rights campaigners and the music industry.
However, since then ministers have been very vague indeed about when those plans will be implemented. And at a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group On Ticket Abuse last week, creative industries minister Ian Murray indicated that formal proposals are not likely to feature in the King’s Speech.
Murray himself previously told ticket touts everywhere - via a Daily Record op-ed - that “your time is up”, but he seems much less bullish about taking on the touts of late. Officially, the government insists it is still “committed” to “stamping out touting once and for all”, but the delays are causing concern.
And Caroline Dinenage MP, chair of Parliament’s culture select committee, told The Guardian this week that a failure to include ticketing legislation in the King’s Speech will “call into question whether the government is serious about protecting music lovers from being ripped off”.
Of course, the UK government is currently imploding and plenty of people are questioning if Starmer will still be in the PM role for long enough to oversee any of the legislative reforms that will be included in the upcoming King’s Speech, which is scheduled to be delivered on 13 May. So maybe that’s why addressing the ticket touting problem has fallen off the priority list.
However, given how incredibly unpopular the UK government is right now, you might think that a savvy politician would want to cynically prioritise a new law that will be hugely popular with millions of music fans and is only really opposed by a very small group of people, most of whom aren’t based in the UK. Though no one can accuse Starmer of being a savvy politician.
But whatever the reasons may be for the delays, campaigners argue that the government’s procrastination is costing British music fans millions of pounds. That argument is set out in a letter to Starmer signed by Which? and an assortment of artist management, live music and primary ticketing companies, as well as music industry organisations like the Music Managers Forum, UK Music and LIVE.
Which? researchers have reviewed the mark-ups on tickets being touted for UK shows from 66 major artists - including Harry Styles, Ariana Grande and BTS - and estimate that the touts could make almost £24 million this summer. And while not every ticket being sold on the resale platforms has been put there by a professional tout, Which? reckons professional sellers could account for £18.5 million of that figure.
Touts could make £6.6 million just from selling tickets to Harry Styles shows, Which? says, with one £200 ticket for a Styles concert being resold for £3622 on StubHub. Though the average mark-ups on Ariana Grande and BTS tickets are even higher. For Styles it’s 159%, for Grande 274% and for BTS 312%.
Meanwhile anti-touting campaign group FanFair Alliance has been monitoring the touting of tickets to Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland, spotting tickets for the BBC event being sold at twelve times face value. It estimates two thirds of the touted tickets for Big Weekend are being sold by professional sellers.
“Tickets continue to be sold on secondary sites at eye-watering mark-ups that shut fans out of accessing the live music, sport and theatre they love”, the letter to Starmer states. It then adds that “predatory tactics used by touts, often operating overseas, are distorting the live events sector and causing significant harm to UK fans who are consistently excluded from attending shows due to exorbitant prices”.
“When plans for legislation were announced, they were framed as part of your government’s drive for ‘national renewal by creating fairer systems and giving hard working people the respect they deserve’”, the letter continues. “Ticketing is one of the clearest examples of an unfair market where consumers feel the system is rigged against them - that’s why it’s so important for the government to deliver on its promises”.
In addition to the letter to Starmer, phone company O2, which has actively supported the campaign against ticket touting, is urging music fans to write to their MPs demanding that new ticketing legislation be included in the King’s Speech. It has also provided a template email on its stampittout.co.uk website.