The UK government has now formally announced plans to ban for-profit ticket touting via new laws that will make it illegal for any person to sell a ticket at a higher price than they paid for it on a primary ticketing platform. The formal announcement was only made this afternoon, despite widespread media coverage about the new rules at the start of the week.
Under the government’s plans, “ticket resale above face value will be illegal”, with face value being defined as “the original ticket price plus unavoidable fees”. Platforms facilitating ticket resale will be able to charge additional fees, though these will be capped. And any platform where tickets are being resold will “have a legal duty to monitor and enforce compliance with the price cap”.
By allowing fans to resell tickets at face value, people who buy a ticket for a show and then can’t attend will still be able to sell that ticket on. But commercial touts will not be able to profit from ticket resale.
Announcing the plans, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy says the government is “putting fans first” and will "shut down the touts’ racket and make world-class music, comedy, theatre and sport affordable for everyone". Ticket touts, she adds “have ripped off fans” for too long, “using bots to snap up batches of tickets and resell them at sky-high prices”. That, she says, must stop.
The government’s plan has been widely welcomed by artists, managers and music industry groups who have campaigned for years - in some cases two decades - for proper regulation of online ticket touts and the resale platforms they use like StubHub and Viagogo.
Unsurprisingly, the government’s announcement has been accompanied by a flood of statements from the music community welcoming the touting ban.
Equally unsurprisingly, opponents of the stricter regulation of touting have also issued statements today, including often controversial resale platform Viagogo and organisations like Get Safe Online, which is part-funded by Viagogo and describes itself as “the UK’s leading internet safety website”.
Those vocal in their support of for-profit ticket touting are generally trotting out the same argument, which is that if platforms like StubHub and Viagogo can no longer facilitate for-profit ticket resale, touts will shift to selling tickets on social media and online forums, resulting in more ticket fraud.
That claim is based on the slightly shaky premise that if more consumers start looking to buy tickets for in-demand events on social media and online forums - and that’s perhaps a fairly big “if” - they are more likely to be scammed by fraudsters who are selling fake tickets, rather than real tickets from ‘legit’ providers being sold at marked up prices.
The likes of StubHub and Viagogo - the argument goes - block those outright fraudsters, because they guarantee a refund if a ticket buyer does not get entry into a show.
Obviously, full on ticket fraud on social media and online forums already happens in the UK, but the pro-tout lobby claim that - in countries where ticket touting is already banned or subject to price caps, in particular Ireland and Australia - cases of ticket fraud have increased.
Responding to the government’s announcement, a spokesperson for Viagogo says, “evidence shows price caps have repeatedly failed fans”, adding that “in countries like Ireland and Australia fraud rates are nearly four times higher than in the UK as price caps push consumers towards unregulated sites”.
Meanwhile retired copper Tony Neate, CEO of Get Safe Online, claims that “capping resale prices would strip away vital protections and push fans toward scammers”.
Previous publications from We Fight Fraud - run by retired fraudster and poacher-turned-gamekeeper Tony Sales - and secondary ticketing lobbyists Bradshaw Advisory, insists Neate, “show that when regulated routes shrink, fraud spikes, reaching nearly four times UK levels in places like Ireland and Australia”.
However, Adam Webb of anti-touting campaign FanFair rejects the claim that ticket fraud has surged in countries with stricter touting regulations.
He says that lobbying by Viagogo and its US-based owner StubHub Inc, and the separate company that operates a StubHub branded resale platform in the UK, has been “built on scaremongering”, pushing “the self-serving idea that any market intervention that impacts their practices will result in negative consequences elsewhere”.
One of those supposed negative consequences is the predicted surge in ticket fraud on social media. Webb tells CMU that “Viagogo and StubHub have paid tens of thousands of pounds to public affairs agencies such as Bradshaw Advisory to concoct economic modelling that reaches these conclusions, as well as to private organisations called We Fight Fraud and Get Safe Online to help deliver this message”.
But, Webb says, there isn’t “any demonstrable independent evidence to back up their claims”. FanFair has “spoken in detail to the biggest Irish banks”, he reveals, “who tell us that the price cap introduced in 2021 did not promote an increase in online fraud. Similarly, we have spoken to Australian consumer groups. They tell us the same about the price caps introduced in Victoria and New South Wales”.
The reality is that many people who end up buying touted tickets for in-demand shows via Viagogo and StubHub begin the process with a Google search for tickets for a particular show or event, from which they are invariably shown search advertising for ticket resale sites.
Because Viagogo and StubHub design their websites in a similar way to primary ticketing platforms, it is inevitable that a fair proportion of buyers won’t even realise they are buying from an unofficial tout rather than an official ticket seller.
Those people are much less likely to end up on social media or online forums, even if that’s where the touts end up selling their tickets, and they are likely to be much more wary about spending money on those kinds of platforms. Plus, under the proposed new laws, social media will be obliged to stop for-profit touting happening on their platforms too, as well as working to stop out right ticket fraud.
“No one is denying social media fraud exists”, Webb says, adding “no one should buy a ticket from a stranger on Facebook Marketplace”. However, he goes on, it exists “regardless” of whether resale price caps are in place, “which is why UK banks continue to issue customer warnings whenever a major event like Taylor Swift or Oasis is coming to town”.
“Our hope with the incoming UK legislation”, he concludes, “is that it can actually start to address this issue and help ticket buyers to safely navigate what has become an increasingly tricky and treacherous market”.
Nevertheless, Viagogo et al will continue to push their arguments as the government takes its proposals to Parliament next year. And the resale site’s spokesperson was very keen to point out that the UK touting ban is not yet a done deal, stating that the government’s announcement today is “part of a long, multi-year process, not a final outcome”.
