The UK government has announced that there will be a price cap on how much touts can re-sell tickets for, as well as an official consultation into the industry and controversial ‘dynamic pricing’ practices. See details below along with our interview with MP Chris Bryant.
Today (Friday January 10), the government has launched a public consultation outlining “a range of measures in the ticket re-sale market that aim to better protect fans, improve access to live events and support the growth of the UK’s world leading live events sector”.
This includes putting a limit on how much secondary tickets to concerts, theatre and sport events can be sold for by companies, sites and individuals. A statement from the government said that this was part of a plan to “clamp down on ticket touts fleecing the public”, with touts reportedly costing music fans an extra £145million per year. Last year saw Oasis reveal plans to cancel more than 50,000 tickets to their reunion tour sold via secondary ticket sites.
Speaking to NME about the news, the Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms Sir Chris Bryant MP of the new Labour government said that this price cap wasn’t up for debate – but it was “now just a matter of how the government takes action”.
“Imagine Becky – she’s living at flat seven at number 83 on the high street is desperate to get tickets for her mum’s favourite act on her birthday,” said Sir Chris. “She logs on at 9am and by 9.05am all the tickets have gone. Within half an hour, those same tickets are on the secondary ticket market for five times as much. That’s just unfair.”
Discussing the obstacles of the secondary ticket market, Sir Chris said: “The number one issue is how many tickets you should be able to buy because it’s clear that bots using artificial names manage to hoover up hundreds of them. How do we deal with that?
“Number two is the cap and how much that should be. Should it be face value only? That’s what the Principality Stadium does for Welsh Rugby Union matches. Or should it be plus fees or plus 10-30 per cent? That’s the kind of range we’re consulting on.
“Thirdly, we’re consulting on whether there should be a licensing system. We’re open to views on that.”
He added: “Our manifesto commitment was to tend to appalling abuses that you see already in the secondary ticket market. We said we’d deal with it in the General Election, we intend to, and that’s the main part of our consultation.
“We’re not asking whether to act, we’re asking how to act and what action to take.”
Other proposals put forward in the consultation include “increasing accountability of ticket re-sale websites and strengthening consumer enforcement”, with ministers also launching “a call for evidence into pricing practices in the live events sector, such as dynamic pricing”.
This comes after last September saw the sale of the highly sought after tickets for Oasis’ long-awaited reunion tour sold with ‘surge’ pricing – where the cost of tickets would increase (often by hundreds of pounds) due to demand without warning. This infuriated thousands of fans, with experts claiming that the practice could be in breach of consumer law. It is currently being investigated by both the European Commission and Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK.
Oasis previously said that they “at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used” in the sale, claiming that “prior meetings between promoters, Ticketmaster and the band’s management resulted in a positive ticket sale strategy, which would be a fair experience for fans, including dynamic ticketing to help keep general ticket prices down as well as reduce touting, the execution of the plan failed to meet expectations.”
Sir Chris said that he wasn’t able to discuss the Oasis sale specifically while it was under investigation, but did say that “dynamic pricing is clearly an issue”.
“There are lots of different forms of it,” he argued. “I recently bought tickets to the theatre at the last minute and they were cheap because they couldn’t fill the venue – that is a form of dynamic pricing which I’m entirely in favour of. Likewise, I’ve got a little arts festival down on my patch in South Wales and we run an early bird ticket scheme.
“In relation to dynamic pricing, we’re asking in the broad sense what people’s views are. We need to gather evidence on that. We might choose to act, but that’s not a guarantee. What we’re trying to do in all of this is be proportionate to the problem that there is.”
He continued: “The key thing here is transparency and fairness in the system. It’s a perfectly good argument that if you have this heightened anxiety deliberately created by the system, then you see your ticket prices going up by hundreds – is that a fair system? We’re asking people what we should do about that.
“I’m a music fan and I go to loads of gigs, and quite often it’s pretty straightforward. I want to make it fair for fans, and for artists too. I don’t want them to be in a situation where whatever system they go with will mean they’ve got it wrong.”
Asked if there was an argument that dynamic pricing effectively meant that primary sellers become touts themselves, Sir Chris replied: “This is a consultation, so if you want to put that point forward then we’ll be interested to hear it.”
The 12 week consultation will end on April 4, with the hope that plans could come into action in 2026.
“The truth is that some stuff could happen now,” added Sir Chris. “Some of the organisations could make it much clearer on what the face value of tickets is, rather than finding out at the last minute with added fees and dynamic pricing. Some of that could happen now and I’d invite companies to be as transparent as possible.
“We’ve said that we will legislate in this field. It will need primary legislation and that takes a bit of time, but I would hope that we’d be able to do that in the next year.”
The CMS Committee – responsible for scrutinising the spending, policies and administration of the government Department for Culture, Media and Sport via holding ministers to account in the House of Commons – welcomed the news of the consultation.
“The Government’s proposals would go some way to help address the perverse incentives that are punishing music fans, paying too much whether to ticket companies or touts,” said CMS Committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage MP.
“Fan voices must be amplified within Whitehall and the live music ecosystem. This consultation should be a precursor to the Government launching a comprehensive fan-led review of music, as called for by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.”
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She added: “It needs to look closely at how the music industry is working and how to ensure music lovers’ money gets to the small venues and fledgling artists and songwriters who feed this fundamental sector.”
This comes after the CMS Committee backed the government’s call for a ticket levy to brought in for all gigs at arena level and above, after their own inquiry into the need for the upper echelons of the music industry to support grassroots music venues and artists.
The government has since revealed a deadline, stating that they want to see “tangible progress across the music industry by the first quarter of 2025” through voluntary means, before they look into making a levy mandatory.
It was this week revealed that music sales in the UK hit a 20 year high – but industry insiders argued that “beneath the surface, UK artists earn far below average salaries”.
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