UK to ban price-hiked resale tickets
The government has today announced plans to make it illegal for tickets to concerts, theatre, comedy, sport, and other live events to be resold for more than their original cost.
Ticket touting has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. Touts buy large volumes of tickets online, often using automated bots, before relisting them on resale platforms at hugely inflated prices. This has caused misery for millions of fans and damaged the live events industry.
The proposals will stamp out this practice, improving access for genuine fans when tickets originally go on sale and ending rip-off pricing on the resale market.
Under the new rules:
- Ticket resale above face value will be illegal – this will be defined in legislation as the original ticket price plus unavoidable fees, including service charges
- Service fees charged by resale platforms will be capped to prevent the price limit being undermined
- Resale platforms will have a legal duty to monitor and enforce compliance with the price cap
- Individuals will be banned from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to buy in the initial ticket sale
“For too long, ticket touts have ripped off fans, using bots to snap up batches of tickets and resell them at sky-high prices. They’ve become a shadow industry on resale sites, acting without consequence,” said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.
“This government is putting fans first. Our new proposals will shut down the touts’ racket and make world-class music, comedy, theatre and sport affordable for everyone.”
The new rules will apply to any platform reselling tickets to UK fans, including secondary ticketing platforms and social media websites. Businesses who break the regulations could be subject to financial penalties of up to 10% of global turnover from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), under new powers introduced the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024.
According to analysis by the CMA, typical mark-ups on secondary market tickets exceed 50%, whilst investigations by Trading Standards has uncovered evidence of tickets being resold for up to six times their original cost.
Government analysis suggests that these measures could save fans around £112 million annually, with 900,000 more tickets bought directly from primary sellers each year. Inclusive of all fees paid, the average ticket price paid by fans on the resale market could be reduced by £37.
