UK risks missing ‘next Ed Sheeran’ with ticket resale ‘racketeering’ – debate

Britain is at risk of losing out on its next Ed Sheeran, a minister has heard, as he vowed to end bad habits in the ticket resale market.

Labour MP Jack Abbott said a crackdown on digital ticket touts “is about fairness”.

Sum 41 fan Emma Foody, the Labour MP who tabled Thursday’s Westminster Hall debate, suggested fines or bans for websites which host ticket touts who buy up tickets in bulk and sell them at a much higher price than their face value.

Arts minister Sir Chris Bryant vowed “change” in a bid to “get to a place where the face value is the face value and other people aren’t racketeering on the back of it”.

Mr Abbott said: “I cannot help but wonder if Suffolk’s next Ed Sheeran will be denied their chance to shine, too.”

The MP for Ipswich, in Sheeran’s home county, added a resolution to ticket resales “is about fairness and it is about protecting consumers and fans”.

He said: “It’s high time to face up to these challenges.”

Ms Foody, the MP for Cramlington and Killingworth, said: “Growing up, me and my friends would save our pocket money or our paper round money.

“We’d queue up at local music shops like Pet Sounds (in Newcastle upon Tyne) to get tickets to gigs at the local universities generally.”

She added fans “feel a real sense of injustice at the scale of secondary ticket platforms” and urged for greater transparency which could “play a pivotal role in educating consumers about the risks of ticketing”.

Ms Foody asked Sir Chris: “Where there are websites that do continuously exploit fans, could the use of fines and the removal of websites entirely be considered to strengthen the protection of fans?”

Marie Goldman, Liberal Democrat MP for Chelmsford, said she had fallen foul of online ticket touts in 2012, when tickets she bought to Sting at the Hammersmith Apollo had been duplicated and used by somebody else.

Turning to sport, she added: “A lot of people argue, ‘well, it’s all just supply and demand’ in terms of ‘well, if the tickets are worth that, then people wouldn’t pay it if the tickets weren’t worth 20 times the face value’.

“But actually there’s a very good reason why many sporting activities want to keep prices down and that’s because they want to keep the fans and the players of the future in child form coming along with their parents and growing a love for the game.”

Conservative shadow culture minister Luke Evans pressed Sir Chris on when his Government would launch a consultation to prepare potential rule changes.

“I ask the minister to not Look Back In Anger at the last government, after all, the Conservatives were ‘caught beneath a landslide’ by a Labour Champagne Supernova.

“And he is the Government. And it’s his Government to get this right,” he told MPs.

Dr Evans also asked for more information about a future consultation’s scope, including whether it would look at “role of search engines who signpost customers into the hands of touts, which is a problem”.

Sir Chris replied: “In the end we need to get to a place where the face value is the face value and other people aren’t racketeering on the back of it.”

He said his department had looked at ticket resale prices for several events, including an Olivia Rodrigo concert in Manchester next July, where a £50 ticket was listed for £2,573 on one reselling website, a 5,046% increase.

“One key matter that we will have to make sure that we get right when and if we bring forward legislation in this field is the enforcement aspect, because there’s no point bringing forward new laws if you can’t enforce them,” Sir Chris said.

“The more the prosecuting authorities feel able to act in this sphere the better.

“If they want to come to me and say we don’t have the powers that we need or we don’t have the resources that we need, then I’m happy to hear that and then we can act on the basis of that.”

On the consultation’s timing, the minister promised an exercise “soon” and added: “I would just say to all the people that I’ve referred to, to Gigsberg and Viagogo and StubHub and all the rest and Ticketmaster and so on, change is coming so you should start getting ready for it.”