MusicTank

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The practice of reselling tickets is as old as the ticketed event itself.  For as long as there have been limitations on attendance, there have been individuals looking to make a quick buck from the disparity between supply and demand.  Before the rise of the Internet, touts prowled the streets surrounding a venue, hawking their goods to speculative punters arriving without tickets.  Now, touting is about as difficult as checking your email, with the initial transaction, advertising and resale of the ticket all occurring online.

Pioneering online marketplace eBay empowered the first generation of online touts, while the last decade has seen literally hundreds of competing services emerge.  Recent estimates place the value of the European secondary ticketing market around the €9bn mark, with nearly 1000 such websites servicing an eager public who increasingly see touting as a fact of gig-going life.

A burgeoning enthusiasm for live music, coupled with a plethora of straightforward / consequence-free resale methods means touting is now at an all time high. So much so, the government has been taking note for the best part of two years, with the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) commissioning an independent report on consumer attitudes towards secondary ticketing.  Published in March 2007, this report has informed the work of a cross-party select committee, whose recommendations were presented to the government in another report, published on 10th January this year.  The government now has two months to respond, meaning we can expect to be hear their preferred solution to the touting ‘problem’ in the weeks preceding this event. 

So who are the major stakeholders, and what are their concerns?  First up is the Resale Rights Society (RRS), a recently-formed cabal of artist managers who disapprove of lucrative secondary ticketing, unregulated and without recompense for venue owners, promoters and artists, who make the investment, take the risks and lose money on the vast majority of tours.

The RRS also echo the select committee’s concerns regarding consumer protection, mooting the idea of a voluntary code-of-practice whereby reputable sellers carry a ‘Kitemark’ to signify their adherence to recommended guidelines. In return for the RSS endorsement, certified sellers would be expected to pay a levy to the aforementioned parties on each transaction.  It is hoped that such a scheme would marginalise those intermediaries who turn a blind eye to sellers engaged in questionable activities, such as the mis-selling of tickets, failure to disclose restrictions, false identity purchases and the sale of free tickets / those reserved for children or disadvantaged groups.

Many secondary ticketing agents, however, strongly object to this proposition, claiming adequate policies to ensure customer protection are already in place.  Similarly, it is fair to say that the secondary ticketing market owes its existence at least in part to the absence of adequate return/refund methods – those with a genuine reason for not being able to attend a pre-booked gig have little choice but to turn to the touts.  In this sense, secondary ticketing agents can be said to be offering consumers a valuable service.

Such an assertion is supported by Ticketmaster’s recent acquisition of secondary ticketing website Get Me In, which suggests primary ticketing agents not only see the value of permitting resale, but wish to incorporate secondary sales into their own business models.

Venue owners would prefer to see the government legislate so as to stamp out secondary ticketing altogether - hardly surprising as it's the venues that have to deal with the fallout from ticket mis-selling.  One suggestion is that action against touting could be counterbalanced by adopting a sensible refund policy.

Each of these opposing views raise more questions than they answer.  Is there adequate justification for artists receiving a cut of resale profits - could a consumer protection scheme not operate successfully in the absence of such an arrangement?  Why do secondary ticketing agents not do more to tackle mis-selling?  Is there any truth in rumours of wholesale ticket buying by secondary agents themselves, and if so from whom are they purchasing the tickets?  Is there a compelling argument why touting shouldn’t be banned outright if refund services are improved?

More progressively, how will the anticipated auctioning of some of the tickets impact the secondary market, could ethical ticket exchanges such as Scarlet Mist provide a solution, and could moves to adopt dynamic ticket pricing as utilised in the commercial airline industry, together with a workable refund policy, negate the market altogether?