Ed Sheeran ticket price row fuels criticism of Royal Albert Hall
The musician has condemned the soaring cost of seats, amid demand for action to tackle ‘conflicts of interest’ at the institution.
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Your support makes all the difference.Hyper-inflated ticket prices for an Ed Sheeran gig at the Royal Albert Hall has sparked criticism by the singer and fuelled concerns at Westminster over the running of the iconic venue.
Parliament heard £200 seats for next month’s performance were being touted online for nearly £6,000, a hike of 2,900%, leading the musician and his promoters to issue an open letter condemning the practice as it drove away real fans.
The astronomical increase was highlighted in the face of demands by peers for action to tackle “huge unresolved conflicts of interest” at the hall.
The main disquiet raised in the House of Lords centred on the ability of seat-holding trustees, who make up the majority of the governing board, to benefit financially from decisions made about the operation of the world-famous institution, which also hosts the BBC Proms.
The venue, which is a registered charity and so benefits from the associated tax breaks, also received a £20 million loan during the coronavirus pandemic.
Critics argue legislation making changes to the governance of the venue, the Royal Albert Hall Bill, failed to address the problem and would even exacerbate it.
The private Bill includes plans to create 72 seats for sale, which the upper chamber heard could net £300,000 each.
A former chair of the Charity Commission, Baroness Stowell of Beeston, said: “I do think it takes some audacity for the trustees of the Royal Albert Hall to submit a Bill requesting more decision-making powers without addressing their unacceptable conflicts of interest policy.
“The fundamental problem with the Royal Albert Hall’s governance regime is that contrary to standard charity law, its trustees can benefit privately from the decisions they make about how the hall is run.”
The Conservative peer added: “In today’s modern world, where public trust in institutions is low, their expectations about accountability high, boxes and seats at the Royal Albert Hall are bought and sold for hundreds and thousands if not millions of pounds, and trustees of a charity are able to sell their tickets for concerts at prices at least 10 times more than their face value, the situation at the Royal Albert Hall seems, to me at least, completely unacceptable.”
Lady Stowell went on: “Now is the time for them to modernise their governance and bring it in line with the rest of those charities on the register.”
Tory peer Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts said: “I share the view that as regards the governance of the hall there is at its heart a major and, in my view, irreconcilable conflict of interest.
“We have before us this Bill, promoted by the governing body of the hall, which does nothing to address this interest conflict. Indeed in some respects it makes it worse.”
At the heart of the governance of the hall there are these huge unresolved conflicts of interest
He added: “There must be a concern, at least a possibility, that the idea of selling Ed Sheeran seats is more important than an equally worthy but less prestigious issue such as a schools’ choir competition.
“Within the shell of a registered charity, the trustees are running what appears to be a personally highly profitable operation.”
Charity boss Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie said: “At the heart of the governance of the hall there are these huge unresolved conflicts of interest.
“For me this Bill doesn’t only fail to deal with the issue of conflicts of interest, it enables greater influence for the seat holders of the organisation.”
Culture minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay said as a private Bill the Government “neither supports nor opposes it”.
Responding for the hall, Government-appointed trustee Lord Harrington of Watford pointed out it had an independent conflicts committee.
He said: “There is a process in existence. I accept arguments that it is not enough and it doesn’t deal with conflicts properly … but it is not taken lightly.”
On inflated ticket prices, he said: “That implies that the people that own those seats have done something wrong by selling them. They do own them and the fact they are selling those seats that belong to them on the market, however crazy it might be, I don’t believe that is relevant to this because those people own those seats.”
He added: “I do believe the trustees act in a manner that’s commensurate with the trustees of a charity.”