Since the start of the year, CMU has been sitting down with key people from across the music industry to discuss their work, key trends and challenges, and what to expect in the year ahead. Today, Sam Shemtob, Director of the Face-value European Alliance For Ticketing, a coalition of companies from across the European live sector that seeks to encourage face-value ticket resale, so that tickets are resold for no more than their original price.
What were important wins and achievements for FEAT in 2023?
2023 was a key year, both for FEAT’s lobbying and our consumer awareness work. After our long-term battle for stricter regulation of online ticket resale sites as part of the EU’s Digital Services Act, we saw a whole host of new due diligence and transparency requirements begin to come into effect.
We meanwhile began to raise awareness of the integral role search engines play in facilitating ticket resale abuse and publicly called for Google to review its advertising policy.
Beyond this, we also continued to bring together Europe’s live industry to support our international consumer awareness campaign - Make Tickets Fair! - finalising our website and preparing for a full roll-out this year.
What were key challenges for your members last year?
Following the recovery of the live industry after COVID, the business climate was still tough, and for bigger shows ticket resale abuse remained rife.
Although now enforceable for very large online platforms and search engines, the Digital Services Act is yet to come into wider effect, which has made it almost impossible to get illegal ticket listings taken down without long and drawn-out legal battles, an option only available for the very largest stadium acts.
Uncapped secondary ticketing marketplaces continued to ignore court orders in the knowledge that further enforcement would likely result in minor fines, many multiples less than the profits to be made on a single concert.
What have you got planned for the next year?
FEAT will be collaborating with our industry partners to launch the Make Tickets Fair! consumer awareness campaign. If you are an agent, promoter, manager or venue who wants to direct fans to information on how they can safely purchase tickets for your shows, you can find out more here.
Another exciting development in early 2024 is the Digital Services Act, which enters into force for platforms like Viagogo and Stubhub from 17 Feb. This promises to improve the transparency of ticket sellers on secondary resale sites and provide promoters, agents or organisations like FEAT with the means to report illegal ticket listings in a streamlined way with a view to getting them taken down quickly.
This will not be without its challenges. FEAT is making contact with new regulators being assigned in each EU Member State to adjudicate take downs of illegal ticket resale listings. We’ll be publishing a guide on this process in the coming months and you can sign up for updates via the mailing list at the bottom of the Make Tickets Fair! website.
Finally, we are very excited to welcome FC Barcelona as the first sports club to join FEAT in our campaign against unauthorised ticket resale. It’s simply fantastic that a club of Barca’s stature is reinforcing our mission!
