Touts, and ordinary consumers, will no longer be able to charge anything more than price at which they bought ticket

Touts, and ordinary consumers, will no longer be able to charge anything more than price at which they bought ticket

Reselling tickets for profit is to be outlawed under plans due to be announced this week, the Guardian has learned, as the government goes ahead with a long-awaited crackdown on touts and resale platforms such as Viagogo and StubHub.

Ministers had been considering allowing touts – and ordinary consumers – to sell on a ticket for up to 30% above the original face value, as part of a consultation process that ended earlier this year.

However, the Guardian understands that reselling a ticket at anything more than the price at which it was originally bought will be banned.

  • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
    13·
    12 hours ago

    How about limiting numbers of tickets sold to corporations to some number? Many major sporting events are almost impossible to attend unless you’re invited by a corporate entity that has some allocation. Quite often the people who do go aren’t interested in the event and are just there to get drunk on free booze.

    Kick the corporations out.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      5·
      10 hours ago

      We’ll have to get rid of the politicians in the back pocket of those corporations first.

      There’s a reason the new legislation doesn’t say anything about them.

  • Nighed@feddit.ukEnglish
    17·
    13 hours ago

    But we are not selling at a profit! The ticket is the same price!

    It’s an expensive business though, so we have to charge a processing fee. Of course, to make sure the ticket is legit, we also need to charge a ticket verification fee to ensure that. Card companies are bandits nowadays too, so we are forced to add a card processing fee to cover that, as well as a reservation fee to cover the cost of holding your ticket while you go through the purchase process.

    We also add mandatory cancellation insurance (through our sister company) to ensure we don’t have to refund you if the gig is cancelled, only 10% of cost, a bargain!

    What do you mean that’s excessive!?! We have to cover costs, the staff costs for our 3 support agents and our hard working CEO alone is crippling, this barely makes us break even!

    • Posted from Bermuda
  • Destide@feddit.ukEnglish
    20·
    15 hours ago

    Treating people with more stringent laws than corporations, it’s the American way…Oh,sorry

    • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      15 hours ago

      Honestly I don’t see the issue with this as it’s reported.

      It’s not banning resale, it’s just banning resale for profit.

      The only real downside I can see is the people who were actually paying the crazy tout prices will have to be more organised and get the tickets when they are released, since I imagine the touting will be significantly reduced (some people will still break the law) if there’s no profit to be had.

      I’m curious as to what you think the issues might be

      • ideonek@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        14 hours ago

        The problem is that tickets for popular artis - in general - are sold for the fraction of the actual market price. There would be enough people ready to pay 10x 20x 100x … but the artist is not “allowed” to put that price on the ticket for PR reason. He would be labeled as greedy or not a real artist. They are leaving money on the table. The inefficiencies in the ticket distributions are not accidental. Many of those are there on purpose as a way to take back some of those money - often by people and processes connected with the artist. A way to [re]sell some tickets for their [real] price.

        The objective truth is that a venue sell tickets way below their value. How do you close that gap?

        Raising the price of tickets SIGNIFICANTLY? Even there, there is a “moral” cap to how high you can raise those.

        So the demand crushes the supply. And 2nd hand can’t close the gap. What do you do then? Lottery? Ticket only to the fastest? For people with the best connection (personal or internet)? It can’t last forever because there are people ready to buy and people ready to sell. It’ll come some fiction like “I sell a ticket for it market value, paired with this drawing of Taylor Swift I did for $1000. It’s a set” Or “I pay you to buy me a ticket - I’m too busy to do it. I’ll cover the price and your <<work>> of obtaining it separately”

        The problem is complex, and in the root of it is that those tickets are simply worth more. I may not be explaining it well, but Freekonomiks have a great episode about it if you’re a podcast fan.