The secondary ticketing market, which allows fans to resell unwanted gig tickets, will become more transparent and potentially safer to use, after the government agreed on 24 February to back legislation that seeks to protect fans from fraud. The proposals also aim to counter the issue of professional touts buying tickets in bulk and reselling them at inflated prices through secondary ticketing agencies.

The proposals, collected together in an amendment to the consumer rights bill tabled by Conservative peer Lord Moynihan, will ensure that fans buying tickets from reselling companies such as Viagogo, Stubhub and Seatwave will know the precise details of the ticket they are purchasing (row, seat, face value, age restrictions, its original seller) – currently not legally required – helping to stamp out the sale of both counterfeit tickets and speculative tickets being sold on the secondary market sometimes before they’re commercially available from event organisers.

Speaking to the Guardian, Moynihan said: “One of the major reasons why you can’t get tickets for high-demand events as a member of the public is because there’s specialised software available to touts which sweeps up the supply within a nanosecond of them going on sale. Then those tickets are made available on the secondary market at sometimes five or 10 times the price. From now on that process is restricted, because you have to have the seat number, row number and so on.”



The amendment, to be enacted when the consumer rights bill becomes law within the next three months, also requires ticket reselling companies to report criminal activity and puts a duty on the culture secretary to review the entire secondary ticketing market in 12 months and report back to parliament.



The new legislation, called “light-touch regulation” in a House of Lords debate on 24 February, marks a victory for “put fans first” campaigners and a U-turn for the government. The culture secretary, Sajid Javid, had rejected an initial Lords amendment to the bill in the Commons and opposed reform in the run up to the debate. He had said it could “overburden fans with red tape” and insisted those who sold on tickets were “classic entrepreneurs”.



Mike Weatherley MP, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Secondary Ticketing, welcomed the proposals, saying: “This has been a long-standing campaign by the APPG to get some overdue changes in place. The free market system has broken down due to the introduction of ‘bots’ and other factors, enabling, on occasions, obscene profiteering for intermediaries against the interest of fans and the wishes of those putting on the event.”



He added: “While the new amendment does not cover every change that we had hoped for, it is an important step in the right direction. I believe that the statutory review on this issue is important and I look forward to seeing if further changes need to made in the future.”



Concerns, however, were raised in the Lords about the implications of the legislation, particularly by Tory peer Lord Borwick. “This recently tabled amendment … could actually allow consumers to be ripped off under the guise of protecting them. All the tickets which the sports and music bodies are concerned about will now go back to being sold in pubs, clubs and car parks, where no consumer protection exists,” he said.



Borwick also expressed concerns about fans becoming accidentally criminalised by failing to give correct details of their tickets when using reselling platforms and whether the treatment of secondary ticketing is “out of step” with other online markets.



Secondary ticketing firms reacted unhappily to the government’s change of heart. A spokesperson for StubHub told the Financial Times that the bill “challenges the ability to have an open and transparent marketplace … It’s not great for our business or great news for our consumers.” She said StubHub would be seeing whether the proposal complied with European law.