Campaign
- For a long time, the ticketing industry has failed to meet the demands of UK music and live entertainment fans.
- Greater transparency needs to be introduced into the primary market, as it has been into the secondary market, so that consumers become more aware of abusive practice and can take steps to avoid it. UK legislators and regulators should act on this as soon as possible.
- Market failure is driven fundamentally by monopolistic activities of the primary market and, in particular, the vertical integration of the dominant company, Live Nation / Ticketmaster. It urgently needs to be broken up.
- We believe the secondary ticketing market provides many great benefits for consumers. The secondary market provides a service for those not able or willing to spend time and effort in securing tickets for their favourite artists when an event goes on sale. Many events are sold on the secondary market well below face value, such as for Bruce Springsteen, P!nk, Shania Twain, Robbie Williams, AC/DC, Kylie Minogue,during the summer of 2024.
- The Government should look to enforce existing legislation rather than introduce costly further legislation and look at only allowing licensed operators who follow a strict code of practice to practice in the secondary market. The FTA is against the UK Government proposal of introducing a cap of 10% on ticket resales, as the FTA believes that this will drive the market underground, increase social media scams and drive traders to operate abroad. There is very little or scant evidence that the introduction of a cap in Ireland has produced any benefits to the industry there, despite the UK Government’s claim to the contrary.
Market failure in UK ticketing
The ticketing industry is currently failing to meet the demands of music and live entertainment fans here in the UK. In our view, the ticket-buying public is frustrated due to a lack of transparency, competition and coherent standards in the industry as a whole driven by an imbalance of power relationships whereby a few primary sellers dominate the market as a whole.
The frustration felt amongst fans of live entertainment is the product of standard practices in ticket issuance which deliberately inconvenience the consumer from the very beginning. Sales are often limited to a short window at an inconvenient time on a Friday morning involving an enormous online queue for a non-refundable ticket that cannot be used for an inordinately long time in the future – it is frequently over a year nowadays from the initial ticket sale until the actual gig takes place. None of this is natural or consumer-friendly, and contrasts against the 365/24/7 flexibility of the secondary market.
In addition to this long wait, which makes unreasonable scheduling demands of the public, the market fails consumers by allowing primary sellers to routinely manipulate their initial offerings to their own benefit.
According to evidence given to a previous DCMS Committee Inquiry by Ticketmaster’s then UK Chairman Chris Edmonds, approximately 30 to 50% of tickets are withheld from the public depending on the artist and venue. The issue of such ‘hold backs’ was a key reason why the State of New Jersey passed a law in 2016, obliging primary sellers to state how many tickets are put on sale.
The deliberate industry tactics used of drip feeding, surge pricing, not advising of how many tickets there are and holding people in queues whilst changing the price unbeknownst to them are just a few clear examples of how consumers are being hoodwinked by the primary market.
Transparency is one of the key factors to making the ticketing market work like the market for other scarce goods. It is time that UK legislators and regulators shone a light on unseemly practices in the primary market and introduced transparency requirements to benefit consumers.
Monopolistic activities in the primary market
The public is generally unaware of how this system operates, and the vertical integration of every stage of the ticketing process – which can see event promotion, artist management, venue ownership, primary and even secondary ticket sales all run by a single entity – takes advantage of the customer.
The vertical integration of ticketing is the opposite of true competition which would force fees down and help establish a market price for tickets. Rather than a marketplace in which vendors jostle to provide prospective customers with the best price, the current system centralises price-setting and market-shaping functions in the hands of a few companies (often inter-related) who can comfortably engage in underhand sales tactics.
One single company, Live Nation/Ticketmaster dominate the entire industry due to their 2010 mega-merger which has acted against consumer interests. According to US journalist, Luke Goldstein:
“Live Nation controls more than 80 percent of major concert venues’ primary ticketing for concerts and an increasing share of ticket resales in the secondary market. The company has exclusive arrangements with 265 concert venues, including deals with more than 60 of the top 100 amphitheaters in the United States. It also has a controlling interest in 338 venues worldwide. Over 400 big-name artists are locked into Live Nation’s management services. No other competitor comes close to having that scale across any of these market segments.”
It should come as little surprise that TicketMaster were the primary ticket seller for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour which has caused so much commotion recently as well as the Oasis reunion tour. The BBC has the best exposé of Live Nation/TicketMaster’s vertical integration that allows it to dominate the live UK music scene here: Oasis ticket row: How Ticketmaster’s owner has grip on UK live music scene
In May this year, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit – joined by 29 US States and the District of Columbia – to break up Live Nation’s monopoly over the live entertainment industry for anti-competitive practices. The sooner this happens the better. UK legislators and regulators too should be alive to the root cause of the problem and act accordingly.
The Secondary Market
The principal value to consumers provided by the secondary ticketing industry lies in the convenience and security of the service to obtain tickets that are difficult/ impossible to get on the primary market due to the activities of the primary seller.
The influence of the primary market means it can determine the nature of the secondary market, when it should be independent and not subject to vertical integration whereby tickets can essentially be sold twice by the same company abusing their power. The secondary market should be purely for consumers, enabled by responsible traders.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been clear that it is the partial responsibility of traders to report abuse if they see something amiss. The Fair Ticketing Alliance has been at the forefront of doing so consistently when it comes to the secondary market.
We have been integral in getting transparency introduced into the market and sending of screenshot evidence to authorities trying to stamp out abuse such as getting bot groups closed down and stopping software that runs against the primary ticketing market systems.
We also believe that the secondary ticketing exchanges like Viagogo need to do more due diligence as to what is listed on their websites. Proof of original purchase confirmation should be mandatory and enforcement by authorities should be carried out on any abuses seen on the online exchanges.
Licensing of secondary ticketers
Over the years, the FTA has aligned itself with the CMA’s recommendations which are born out of the two independent reports into ticketing submitted by Professor Michael Waterson to the government and who we have consulted with also in terms of our direction.
We continue to support these recommendations and would like to see them implemented by the next government as they were not fully by the previous one. The final one of these recommendations is to license the secondary ticketing market which should be seen as a third way between a laissez-faire free market and a total ban on the industry which would only drive it underground or abroad and see more market abuse to the detriment of consumers.
A licensed system would allow responsible traders to re-sell tickets and make a return on their investment for the risk they are taking. In return, these operators would be fully regulated by the authorities, traders paying a deposit bond and an annual fee, whilst also submitting their ledgers allowing for transparency and to bring about control into the marketplace. Licensing would also curtail the size of the secondary market as it is currently saturated with botted and speculated tickets, thus skewing the market values of tickets.
A further condition of licensing would be to follow a strict industry code of practice. Our own one has helped in the fight against illegal practices of bot usage, the use of queue jumping software in ascertaining tickets, as well as speculative selling of tickets that people do not own at the time they sell them.
There is a window of opportunity now for the UK to introduce a licensing system to drive up standards and prevent bad actors from operating.
Bots
Many individuals engage in using computer software programs to bulk buy tickets. A practice that was specifically banned by introduction of The Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018
Whilst bots have always been the scourge of the secondary ticketing sector, there has been a huge surge in this type of criminality over the past 2 years. A new, younger and tech-savvy generation, often referred to as “sneaker kids” (as many left sneaker reselling to resell tickets) has now entered this space. Typically, these individuals can be found on one or more of the many discord groups that have been set up to provide these types of illegal software to its users who will pay a monthly subscription fee. Much evidence of this has already been collated.
The Regulations that came into force makes it an offence to use software to purchase tickets in excess of the limit, the punishment of such an offence is an unlimited fine. However, with no specific enforcement agency previously given any power to act under these Regulations, bot users have faced no fear of prosecution.
The recent Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has now given the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) the power to act and we trust that sufficient funding is provided by Government so that it can bring future convictions, here in the UK and abroad.
Speculative selling
This is the fraudulent practice of selling tickets before they have been acquired. This practice is banned under The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
At any given moment, you can see in real-time individuals committing these frauds by seeing particular tickets listed on secondary resale websites and the very same tickets still available on primary ticketing websites. In some cases, a consumer may purchase a speculative ticket on one of these platforms, the “seller” will receive the sale confirmation by email and will then purchase the same tickets from the primary ticketing website. In other cases, these particular “sellers” will have no immediate access to securing the tickets they have sold but anticipate they will acquire them later down the line. This often leads to disappointment with consumers not receiving their tickets and having to chase refunds from their point of purchase as well as possibly losing out on other costs like hotel bookings etc.
The CMA has solutions in place that includes forcing sellers to provide proof of purchase to the platforms they sell on, making platforms strictly liable for ensuring that information about tickets listed on their sites and the identities of sellers is accurate, by removing any possible legal defences linked to the fact that the product/information is supplied by a third party.
The CMA has stated that by introducing such measures would “make it very difficult for professional resellers to sell tickets procured unlawfully, thereby reducing their incentives to do so”.
We trust that Government will accept the CMA’s recommendations in full.
If you support our aims and would like to join our campaign, make a donation or register to become an Associate for access to our Associates Content and be added to our mailing list get in touch.