Ticket Touting in the Music Industry
Ever gone to buy a ticket for a sold out event, and found the cheapest option is about £40.00 more than the final release?
Chances are, if you regularly attend live music events, this has happened at least once.
Nowadays there are many different sites that allow you to purchase second hand tickets, some staying within their legal confines and others not so much. Unfortunately some of these sites continuously breach consumer law through various avenues, such as allowing sellers to operate anonymously through their domain. This is an illegal practice, as it completely takes the right away from the consumer to contact the vendor.
The resale of event tickets for profit is not a new concept. For years, people have purchased tickets in bulk with the intention of distributing them for personal gain. This practice is theoretically illegal, (based on the Consumer Rights Act of 2015), however policing of these strategies is not sufficient enough to prevent regular occurrence. Below are the three specific provisions for the online resale of tickets:
‘Anyone offering tickets for resale online must provide clear information about face value, seat location and any usage restrictions; and make clear any link with an event organiser or online platform on which the ticket is being resold.’
‘Vendors are protected from having their tickets cancelled by event organisers purely as a result of the resale (unless this result of re-selling is clear in the original terms of sale and these terms are not deemed to be unfair).’
‘Secondary ticketing platforms have a new legal obligation to report criminal activity they become aware of in relation to tickets to the police and event organisers.’
The practice works by implementing ‘bots’ with various credit card details into ticket sale sites, and purchasing the tickets in bulk as soon as they are released. They are then resold to the consumer at grossly exaggerated prices, with the profits going straight into the pockets of the offenders. Not only does this rip off the consumer, it also directly contributes to the funding for these schemes, leaving consumers feeding the fire by purchasing marked up tickets.
Since 1994, resale of tickets for football matches has been illegal, although this law was never officially put into practice for the resale of live music events. It has been made illegal in both France and Norway, however the UK is yet to follow suit.
How can we combat this? Unfortunately, until dedicated policing of these resale sites and stricter provisions are put into place, as a consumer there’s not much we can do other than boycott the event. But with record sales not what they used to be your favourite artists rely on ticket sales to keep working on the music you love, leaving us in a vicious cycle. As you can probably imagine, most performers condemn this practice. As stated by Pixies frontman Black Francis in a recent interview with the Observer, “Our fans mean an awful lot to us - The fact that any of them would be taken advantage of by rogues and scoundrels trying to fleece them with wildly inflated ticket prices is simply not acceptable.”
Fortunately, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. The team over at Fanfair Alliance are working hard on a creative solution to this, bringing together government officials, music industry professionals, entrepreneurs and consumers to discuss approaches to regulating this issue. Also, websites such as ‘Songkick’ work extremely hard on their online security procedures to ensure that tickets are not bought in bulk for resale in this manner. Make sure you do your part to help combat ticket touting by heading over to http://fanfairalliance.org/ and signing up to their mailing list. They will ensure that you are kept in the loop regarding both your rights as a consumer, and how to best avoid ticket scams such as touting for profit.
Thanks for reading.
Matt — Signalfire
#tickettouting #musicbiz #musicindustry #scamming #musicbiz2016 #industrynews #musictickets #signalfire #tickets #problem
