TICKET TOUTING

Ticket Touting Unfair Practice or an Enterprise Culture?

Ticket Touting Unfair Practice or an Enterprise Culture?

Ticket touting is an emotive subject on which very strong and polarised views are held, by those involved in the selling of tickets for sports fixtures, concerts and theatres, and by some of the people who go to the events. There is no consensus as to whether “touting” means all reselling of tickets, all reselling not authorised by the original issuers or only the shady or less reputable activities. The whole secondary market in tickets for entertainment and sporting events is regarded by some as a scourge, where parasitic profiteering threatens the very future of the industries on which it feeds. Others see it as a valuable service, a godsend to fans who are desperate to obtain tickets for oversubscribed events, and to those who find themselves unable either to use their tickets or to obtain refunds for them.

TOUTS We are often asked why we allow touts to buy tickets. The simple answer is that we do not knowingly sell to touts. We take great time and effort to prevent multiple purchases and work hard to prevent tickets being touted, unfortunately the law is not on our side and it is a difficult and time consuming exercise trying to police purchases, however we do try our best. Many touts buy tickets from a number of sources using numbers of people to buy for them. They will but from auction sites and also advertise on websites that they buy up unwanted tickets.

Part of the problem is that as it is the customer, not Festival Republic, who has had their money taken, it has to be the customer who reports the problem to Trading Standards, the Police etc. We have no power to do this. Time and time again we have reported websites, illegally posted ads and a host of other problems but despite the concerted efforts of the whole industry the problem persists. At this time the law stands in favour of the secondary market as confirmed by the recent government report in to ticket touting. The government has indicated that the market should self regulate but have not unfortunately addressed the issues of disreputable traders and their negative effect on the innocent consumer.

We did not receive any evidence from the grass roots or fan bases complaining that they were unable to obtain or afford tickets for their chosen events. However, we believe that more information is needed on the practices of secondary ticket agents in acquiring large blocks of tickets within a very short period of their going on sale, and the effect of this on the consumer Many event organisers have sought to control secondary selling by imposing terms and conditions which prohibit resale (for profit) and provide for cancellation of tickets sold in breach (Courty, 2000, 167). However, the enforcement of such conditions raises its own problems. While there is technology which makes it possible to prevent the use of resold ...