Draft Breaching Of Limits On Ticket Sales Regulations 2018

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 General Committees

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Does the Minister agree that one reason why those bots are used to hoover up tickets is the massive profits that can be made? Has she given any consideration to the possibility of bringing in a maximum percentage cap on resale tickets? If she has not, will she? That would remove the profit motive, and the big players would go because the profits would not be big enough.

[Margot James]

Thought has been given to that and to other ways of capping tickets. Indeed, Professor Waterson considered it in his review, but he recommended against it. Experience in other markets has shown that people find it quite easy to get round any cap. Certainly, the market would not go away, but it might be pushed elsewhere, and there would be difficulties in defining a measurable base value of any cap. Also, rapidly changing routes to market, for example through social media platforms in addition to secondary ticketing sites, would make any legislation extremely difficult to police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson]

Like the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, I am pleased that the new rules will require ticket sellers to provide more information about resold event tickets, to try to protect consumers from rip-off prices. I know that sellers of tickets on secondary sites now have to supply unique ticket numbers to the buyer to identify the ticket seat, standing area or location. That enables consumers who buy from secondary sites to see exactly what they are getting. Of course, it is welcome news that action is being taken to clamp down on ticket bots, which, as the Minister pointed out, harvest tickets from primary sellers’ online sites in order to sell them at hugely inflated prices.

I wonder whether the Minister will consider what other action could be taken, given that sites such as Google are still directing fans to sites such as Viagogo at the top of an online search rather than to official ticketing sites. Does she have any thoughts on that, and does she have any plans to see what she can do about it? What we are hearing today is all very good news, but it really does not go far enough. I heard the Minister’s comments earlier, but I urge her seriously to re-examine the feasibility of a flat percentage cap on the resale price of tickets on secondary sites. She said that that would push the market elsewhere, but if the big players could not use online sites to make the hugely inflated profits they do now, surely the level of abuse would be massively reduced.

We have heard some examples of hugely inflated prices, which are truly shocking. We can regulate this and ban that as much as we like, but as far I can see the clearest and perhaps most effective thing to do would be to tackle the other end: the profits. If we capped the resale price of tickets on currently legitimate sites, all the big players such as Viagogo and Get Me In! would leave the field because it would not be as profitable as it is now. The consumers and real fans of live events would win, and everyone would know where they were. That would have a huge impact on the abuses that we all know take place, helping to remove tickets from big online sites on which tens of thousands of tickets are sold to consumers at hugely inflated, eye-watering prices.