Have
you ever tried to buy tickets for a sporting event or a pop concert only to
find that all the tickets have been sold out in a few minutes?
Have
you then discovered that they’ve suddenly re-appeared for sale at an
extortionate mark-up on a different website?
Ticket touts – with their links to organised crime - now
use ‘botnet’ technology - computer programmes which work by inundating ticket
providers with thousands of electronic requests at the same time, to buy
tickets en masse. They also hide behind the anonymity of resale sites to avoid
accountability for selling on tickets which have a proviso that they are not
for re-sale.
For example:
·
all 20,000 tickets for
Monty Python’s reunion performance sold out in 45 seconds, only to reappear on
the secondary market at more than 15 times their face value;
·
concerts by the Stone
Roses at Heaton Park were being advertised on secondary ticketing websites for
more than £1,000 after tickets had sold out, having had an original value of
£55.
·
In September 2015, the
Rugby World Cup is the third biggest sporting event (based on global TV reach)
this year with 20 nations playing a total of 48 games. Tickets for the Final as
sold by the Rugby Football Union officially range from £150- £715, but are
already being offered on secondary sites for over £1,100.
As
well as sport and music fans wanting not to be ripped-off by these touts, there
is massive support for change across all political parties and from the major
sports bodies, cultural institutes and music industry representatives.
So,
what do you think this coalition government thinks about this?
Sajid Javed, now the Conservative Secretary of State for
Culture has said:
"Ticket resellers act like
classic entrepreneurs, because they fill a gap in the market that they have
identified. They provide a service that can help people who did not obtain a
supply of tickets in the original sale to purchase them for sporting and
cultural events. As long as those tickets have been acquired genuinely and
lawfully, it is an honest transaction, and there should be no Government
restriction on someone's ability to sell them."
He went on to dismiss a longstanding anti touting
campaigner:
“The interests …. are probably those of the chattering
middle classes and champagne socialists, who have no interest in helping the
common working man earn a decent living by acting as a middleman in the sale of
a proper service.”
The
government says it has “……no plans to introduce new regulations on the
secondary ticket market".
I
think the Culture Secretary and the government are completely out-of-touch with
ordinary fans and families. That’s why I am supporting the calls of an
all-party parliamentary group to change the law.
The
changes propose that websites which re-sell tickets must provide
information about the identity of the seller, all relevant information about
the ticket, including the face value, restrictions on the ticket, location of
the seat where relevant, the booking identification or reference number and
whether the ticket is being sold in contravention of terms and
conditions agreed by the original purchaser. Websites would also have
to immediately remove tickets from sale when the event organisers informed
them that the relevant information was inaccurate or incomplete.
I’m
happy to help put fans first by kicking the touts in to touch.
