Ticket Abuse

Andrew Bingham Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mike Weatherley]

The argument goes that the creator will still get the same sort of money, but that is not true, especially if there is an audience that they want to target. Taking away control from performers also takes away control of how money is distributed. I have no problem with a band giving a promoter tickets to sell on the secondary ticket market, if they want to generate additional income. However, the process should be transparent.

My hon. Friend did not mention the fact that the Treasury is disadvantaged by the practice. There are people who do not pay VAT or tax on their secondary ticketing sales, and that is wrong. If they make a profit from someone else’s activity, I do not see how he can disagree about their paying that.

In 2011, I supported the private Member’s Bill on ticket touting promoted by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). The sensible suggestion that profits from re-selling should be limited to 10% more than the face value of the ticket has already been adopted in some Australian states. We can argue about whether 10% is the correct amount, as there could be ticket fees and so on in addition.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

That would not work, because it would drive certain people to the underground market, as they would have to get more than 10%. Surely it would be back to blokes outside concert venues shouting “Tickets, tickets, tickets.”

[Mike Weatherley]

I tend to agree. I am not that worried about the odd ticket tout outside a venue, but I am worried about people making money from a bank of about 1,000 computers in a room the size of this one automatically buying tickets, when they have no intention of going to the gig. Those are not touts as we know them. Things have substantially changed since 2006-07. We are in a completely different sphere of ticket purchasing. Those people do not buy tickets for any other reason. The solution of a 10% limit on reselling would stop the people who buy purely intending to resell, rather than to go to the gig, who take rights away from the intellectual property creator.

Even for those who have not personally had experience of ticket touts, the extent of the problem is illustrated by the lengths to which they go to subvert ticketing controls. A potential solution to touting, which has been adopted by some venues already, is credit card verification, and many other methods are available. Nevertheless, touts often generate such large profits from many events that even that method is ineffective.

That does not, of course, address the issue of completely fraudulent tickets. When people buy, or are driven to buy, from a ticket reseller, they expose themselves to a greater risk. It is not uncommon for someone to buy tickets through a website that looks genuine, and make travel and accommodation plans to attend the event, only to discover when they arrive at the venue that their tickets are fakes. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley that such activity is already illegal, but secondary ticketing makes such illegal activity easier.

The Metropolitan police published a comprehensive report on fraudulent ticketing and the danger it posed to the Olympics that specifically cited ticket fraud, touting and ticket reselling websites as areas of concern. Among several issues, the Met noted that websites with their servers based overseas were causing serious problems by advertising fraudulent tickets and then making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to track the offenders or shut down illegal sites. That is an irrefutable fact, and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee did not address it in 2007.

The Met’s report stressed, as I do, the need for an open and transparent system for ticket reselling, with clear and appropriate regulations. Transparency is the key to protecting not just content creators but ticket buyers from dubious and misleading transactions. It is common in the entertainment industries for all or part of the fee for professionals involved in an event to be paid in tickets. The venue might be paid in tickets to a corporate box, or a promoter or manager might be given them as part of their fee. That is done with the tacit understanding that the recipients of those tickets will subsequently be able to sell them on for significantly more than their face value. It is, of course, the prerogative of the content creators to do that if they want to, but it should be done transparently.

Some of my colleagues, including my hon. Friend, have suggested that trying to regulate ticket touting represents an interference in the natural free market. However, that is a misunderstanding of one of the key principles of the free market—the ability of a market to respond to demand by increasing supply. That is one of the five conditions of a free market. In the case of sports matches or live music, there is no way to increase supply. There are only so many games in the season and bands can only play so many dates.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

I did not intend to make a speech, because I just wanted to hear Members’ arguments—both sides of the argument have been put with great passion. My view is that we must take a pragmatic approach. There is a market for secondary tickets. If people cannot go to a concert, they have to get rid of their tickets. We live in a new world in which we have the internet, and we need to harness it. I think that what has been suggested is trying to preserve in aspic for a new world the way in which tickets used to be dealt with. I have looked into the secondary market and how people operate and, quite honestly, I think it works. I think it is a good system. People can offer their tickets for sale for the price that they want, and if other people want them, they can buy them. I hear the argument, “Oh, well, the ticket prices will be inflated,” but as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) will know from his days at Asda, if people overprice things, no one will buy them. The market will dictate what price tickets will sell at, and we should let the market do that. I do not think that we need to be wrapping things in legislation at every turn.

Many of us will remember the days when there seemed to be people outside sporting events and musical events with fistfuls of tickets. I have never bought a ticket from a tout and I would not do so, but if someone does buy a ticket from a tout outside a stadium, they do not know whether it is genuine, and if an honest person is trying to get rid of a ticket because a member of their family cannot go to the event, they do not know whether the person buying it is paying them in forged money—we hear tales about forged £5 and £10 notes.

The secondary ticketing market, of which I was unaware until I looked into the issue in greater depth, provides a secure way for people to dispose of a ticket that they cannot use. There is a guarantee that they will be paid for the ticket and that the person buying it will get the ticket that they want. With regard to the price being driven up, let us say that there is a surplus of tickets to see the Rolling Stones, Motörhead or whoever my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) would like to go and watch. I do not know what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley likes to watch, but we will have a punt on Barbra Streisand or someone like that. If there is a market for the tickets, that will dictate the price. As has been said, many tickets go for a price below their face value, because that is what the market will allow.

[Philip Davies]

I will not go through my tastes in music with my hon. Friend, but I just want to point something out. Does he agree that many events do not even allow people to get a refund, and that if we do not allow people who cannot go to events to sell their tickets, we are in a completely ludicrous situation? If event organisers are so busy, perhaps a good place to start would be to force them all to allow people to receive full cash refunds if they cannot go to an event, which does not happen at the moment.

[Andrew Bingham]

Yes, and that practice has a knock-on effect because people think, “Actually, I’m not going to buy a ticket, because I don’t know whether I can go. I don’t want to pay out however much for a ticket because if I can’t use it, I’ve lost the money.” My hon. Friend makes a valid point.

The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) made a point about corporate responsibility. I think that legitimate companies with secondary ticket websites will be concerned about their corporate responsibility. I have looked into the issue and held discussions with them. I have talked about the internet and how the world is different, and there is a different way of dealing with tickets. I hear the argument about bots—roomfuls of computers just harvesting tickets. As far as I can see, however, such legitimate companies are aware of their corporate reputation and, as a result, are making every effort to prevent that sort of thing from happening. That is the way in which the secondary market and the systems seem to work. We are in a brave new world in which we are dealing with the internet. When tickets came out many years ago, I remember that we would sit there on the phone, pressing redial, redial, redial. Now we are on the internet, although sometimes it seems somewhat the same—we just hit refresh, refresh, refresh. Learning to deal with the secondary market is about using the internet, not abusing it.

I heard what was said about previous inquiries. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) said that the all-party group had made its mind up, but I am a vice-chairman of that group and I can assure him that I might not fit the template that he seems to imagine for the group, although that might disappoint one or two people. Let us carry out an open and honest inquiry. I have my views, and I will listen to all aspects of the argument, as I am sure that we all will. However, I note that the inquiries in previous Parliaments found nothing wrong with the current system, and I do not think that Government legislation is especially necessary at the moment. The system seems to work, but by all means let us have another look at it. The world has moved on but, as I said, my view is that at the moment it seems okay.