Rockol Tracks: UK politicians wade into concert-ticketing scandal
Kate Bush, Drake and the controversial secondary-ticketing market will be the subject of a major political debate in the UK Houses of Parliament next month.
On the rare occasions when the different political parties agree on an issue, they form an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) to investigate the matter. In May, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse is taking advantage of a discussion about Britain’s Consumer Rights Bill at the government’s House of Commons.
The APPG on Ticket Abuse members want to use the occasion to amend the law to regulate the £1 billion secondary-ticketing market that is growing rapidly as demand for live-events and concert tickets soar.
Although Ticketmaster, a subsidiary of concert-promotion giant Live Nation Entertainment, continues to dominate UK sales of legitimate tickets, the emergence of resellers like Seatwave, eBay subsidiary StubHub, and Viagogo is filling a gap. Even Ticketmaster has its own secondary-ticketing affiliate called Get Me In!.
Some fans might not be able to attend a concert at the last minute due to illness or other personal reasons. If they can regain an expensive ticket’s cost by selling to another fan, all is well and good.
The original round of ticket sales for popular artists might sell out in seconds. Some devotees are prepared to click on an auction website to offer a higher price to anyone ready to sell.
Sadly, the system is being abused. Illegal operators buy in-demand tickets in large quantities specifically to re-sell at inflated prices. Others use social-media networks to offer fake tickets. And fans are left distraught outside venues as their tickets are rejected by security guards because someone else has their seats.
About 170 fans were turned away from Canadian rapper Drake’s gigs at the London O2 Arena in March because they had unwittingly bought counterfeit tickets. Several said they had bought them on websites like Seatwave, Gumtree or via Twitter.
When adored British songstress Kate Bush recently announced her comeback, some Ticketmaster prices ranged from £53.90 and £145.50 each, including handling fees. As demand accelerated, the APPG on Ticket Abuse’s research discovered some were being sold for at least £600 each on the secondary market.
The APPG on Ticket Abuse’s response is a series of recommendations they hope the Consumer Rights Bill debate will take into account.
They include guaranteed compensation for fans who fall victim to ticket scams through resale websites. Resale websites should be legally required to publish full information about the tickets listed, including details about the seller.
The APPG also urges the creations of a dedicated national police agency to track down and prosecute ticketing crimes.
Despite attempts by the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents to legitimize their business by working with consumer groups, live-event promoters and other ticket agencies, the abuse continues.
Member of Parliament (MP) Mike Weatherley, the Conservative co-chair of the APPG and Intellectual Property advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron, has said: “Nobody’s saying there shouldn’t be a secondary market, but it needs to work in the favor of consumers and the creative sector, not of a few faceless individuals getting rich off the hard work, investment and talent of others.”
Furthermore, law-enforcement authorities say ticket scalping is being associated with organized crime. Following the mostly successful ticket sales for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, London’s Metropolitan Police did not mince its words. Its report said: “The lack of legislation outlawing the unauthorized resale of tickets and the absence of regulation of the primary and secondary ticket market encourages unscrupulous practices, a lack of transparency and fraud.”
History indicates there has always been ticket abuse. The dodgy and dubious-looking scalpers, who used to hang outside venues bellowing “tickets for sale,” have simply moved online.
Like Internet spammers and hackers who make consumers’ online lives miserable by using technology illegally, scalpers and touts have no qualms about cheating live-music fans.
This explains why London-based Seatwave and Geneva-headquartered Viagogo, Europe’s two leading online secondary-ticketing agencies, have been lambasted by the live-entertainment sectors since they first came on the scene around 2006.
Their attempts to be a respectable link in the live-entertainment eco-system have had mixed results. Seatwave has reportedly continued to struggle financially. It is even described as “an online scalper” on Wikipedia. Ouch!
Viagogo has made what appears to be the greater effort to be legit. Last year, it commissioned surveys to see how illegal-tickets resale and fraud have hurt consumers. It concluded that UK fans lost £50 million the previous 12 months to fraud, while 500,000 Australians were victims of scalping.
Viagogo’s surveys came shortly after The Great Ticket Scandal, a 2012 TV investigation into secondary ticketing by Channel 4, the UK TV network, for its current affairs strand Dispatches.
In fact, Viagogo, which reportedly handles more than $500,000 worth of tickets a year, applied for a UK High Court injunction to stop the program’s transmission. It failed.
Two years later, secondary ticketing continues to be political dynamite that explodes whenever fans of the big star have been cheated. It would be interesting to see if the APPG of Ticket Abuse can use legislative powers to do something about it for the fans of Kate Bush, Drake or any artist who simply wants to make a living putting on a concert.
[Juliana Koranteng]