Touts who use automated software to bulk-buy thousands of concert tickets for resale at a profit would face prison sentences under new proposals from the Labour party.

How the ticket touts get away with bleeding fans dry Read more

The plan to outlaw the use of ticket-harvesting “bots” was proposed just days after industry experts warned MPs “industrial-scale market abuse” by professional touts was pricing genuine fans out of cultural and sporting events such as rugby union’s autumn internationals.



Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader and shadow culture spokesman, has accused the government of “failing fans” on the issue and is leading the party’s move to introduce criminal penalties for the worst offenders.



Match tickets for next month’s sell-out rugby union international between England and Australia at Twickenham are listed on resale websites for as much as £2,960 a pair – a mark-up of 1,210%. Last year ministers dismissed the need for consumer protections, arguing instead that “prices should be set by supply and demand in the secondary ticketing market”.



Market leaders such as websites StubHub and GetMeIn!, owned by US giant Ticketmaster, typically earn a 25% commission on resales and maintain they are under no obligation to “police or monitor” whether sellers are professional touts. An independent report commissioned by the government last year found “little sign” that listings on resale sites included sufficient information for customers.



Labour MPs, led by Watson, have tabled an amendment to the government’s digital economy bill in a bid to control a market described as “highly unethical” by culture, media and sport select committee witnesses last Tuesday. It proposes that touts found to have used the software could be jailed for up to 51 weeks and fined a maximum of £5,000.



Reg Walker, a security consultant and ticketing-fraud expert, told the committee that touts using bots were able to rack up profits of tens of thousands of pounds. “A tout will harvest, say, 1,000 tickets for an event and simply up the price by a tenner. Those types of touts buy in bulk, so he will buy 1,000 tickets and he will make a £10 profit. He has made 10 grand off the one show. It is an extraordinary amount of money.”

Walker added that touts were also able to artificially inflate ticket prices by up to 30 times face value by harvesting small numbers of in-demand tickets for high-profile concerts and sports fixtures. Earlier this month, tickets for Phil Collins’s comeback residency at the Royal Albert Hall in June sold out in just 15 seconds, before appearing on GetMeIn! for as much as £2,200 each.

Similarly, last year research by Labour revealed a pair of tickets for the Rugby World Cup final were selling on resale site for Viagogo for £51,926 – over 50 times their face value of £1,030.



Watson has since criticised the government’s failure to act on the issue. The prime minister pledged to “look very carefully” at solutions when questioned in the Commons by a Conservative MP, Nigel Adams, who tabled his own amendment to criminalise touts’ use of bots last month. Watson said: “The government is failing fans despite the prime minister’s warm words. They promised to protect rugby fans from unfair ticket touting but with the autumn internationals just begun it is clear that fans are being ripped off left, right and centre. The government must now act.

“London 2012 showed how major international tournaments can take place in the UK and have their tickets protected from touts. Ministers should have used that model for major tournaments to ensure that fans get a fair deal.”



Selling tickets for the 2012 Olympics without permission was a criminal offence. Indeed May, then the home secretary, hiked the maximum penalty for touts from £5,000 to £20,000, arguing it was a “substantial deterrent to serious and organised criminal groups”.



Watson’s intervention will pile yet more pressure on an industry that already faces the prospect of an HM Revenue & Customs inquiry into allegations that professional resellers do not declare the full extent of their earnings, in addition to an existing Competition and Markets Authority investigation into whether the practice breaches consumer protection laws.



Meanwhile the culture, media and sport select committee has broadened the scope of its investigation into ticket abuse. While initially the inquiry focused solely on the use of bot software by touts, the committee said the nature of the evidence it had heard warranted an investigation into the secondary-ticketing industry in its entirety.

