The UK government has presented plans that would ban the resale of concert tickets in the future.
You’ve probably experienced it: you really want to attend a specific concert, but when you try to buy tickets through the official channel, everything is sold out within minutes. That’s partly due to large-scale buyers snapping up tickets as soon as they go on sale, only to resell them later at sky-high prices. If you buy from one of these third parties, the risks are significant. The ticket might be fake, for example. Or the event organiser may have invalidated an entire batch of tickets because the fine print (now increasingly bold…) states that resale is not allowed. In such cases, you wouldn’t be the first person to spend a hefty sum only to be denied entry at the door. But as long as people keep buying these tickets, the grey — or even pitch-black — resale market continues to thrive.
Away with ticket resales!
It’s precisely for that reason that the UK government wants to completely ban ticket resale (for profit, that is — buying a ticket from a neighbour who suddenly falls ill will still be allowed). The idea is to put an end to a shady, often criminal ecosystem and prevent a lot of headaches for consumers. It also increases the chances that genuine fans can buy an official ticket at the normal, usually far lower price. Unsurprisingly, the platforms facilitating ticket resales reacted with outrage to the plan, which threatens their business model. There will undoubtedly be legal challenges as well. After all, how do you ban resale of tickets that are put on the market from abroad?
Still, it seems an interesting step towards creating a fairer ticketing market. Whether the plan will succeed remains to be seen.