Adam Webb looks at FanFair Alliance’s stand against industrial-scale touting

26 August 2016 - Editorial

If the trials and tribulations of recorded music in the online era have been well documented - at times, arguably, over-documented - that doesn’t always seem the case in regards to live music. However, in many ways, the impacts of digital distribution on how we experience gigs and festivals have been equally pronounced.  

For evidence, have a quick Google for the poster advertising 2000’s Reading & Leeds Festival. Headlined by Stereophonics, Pulp and Oasis (though perhaps best remembered for Daphne & Celeste’s disastrous appearance) fans wanting to buy an £80 weekend ticket were advised to call a credit card hotline or visit selected branches of HMV. It wasn’t until 2001 - when, incidentally, this weekend’s headliners, Biffy Clyro, were kicking things off on the Evening Session Stage - that the option to purchase tickets from www.ticketmaster.co.uk or www.meanfiddler.com was given real prominence.  

15 years on, and a revolution has taken place. Practically the entire ticketing industry has moved online, while income from live music (admittedly, skewed towards large-scale events) has counteracted a slide in recorded revenues - to the point where gigs and festivals are now the lynchpin for most artist businesses. In a role reversal of the industry’s golden years, recorded music is increasingly perceived as a driver of more lucrative ticket sales. According to Mintel data, spending at UK live music events rose by 45% between 2010-2015.

In short, the same audiences who prove stubbornly resistant to paying for recorded music, will happily shell out for a gig. And, ironically, there’s a good chance they’ll buy a CD or T-shirt while they’re there.

However, alongside these digitally-driven successes, a sour note lingers: the curse of online ticket touting. 

A phenomenon that began on eBay in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with touts buying up tickets and auctioning them en masse, has long since mushroomed into a professionalised multi-billion pound “secondary ticketing market” dominated in the UK by the Big Four resale platforms: GET ME IN!, Seatwave, Stubhub and Viagogo. 

Promoting themselves as fan friendly “marketplaces”, in reality these services - where every transaction is anonymised - are hugely dependent upon speculators and profiteers. Or, to use their terminology, "brokers" and “power sellers”. Writing in 2012, Live Nation’s Paul Latham estimated that 70% of secondary listings came from “tech savvy” individuals or businesses capable of scooping up huge ticket volumes. Four years on, scalping and bot technology has become ever more sophisticated.

More than that, while unauthorised “ticket touting” once faced outright industry opposition, the “secondary market” itself has undergone a process of creeping legitimisation - with the world’s dominant primary ticketing seller, Ticketmaster, now owning two of the Big Four resale platforms and locked into fierce competition with Stubhub and Viagogo.

That we’ve ended up in this situation is partly a result of political inaction. In 2008, acting on recommendations from the Culture Media & Sport Select Committee, Government decided against additional legislation to regulate secondary ticketing. This was despite the then Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, describing ticket touts as “leeches”, a high profile NME campaign, a series of ‘tout summits’, and warnings from key players in the live business that failure to legislate, and allowing the likes of Viagogo to Stubhub to steal a march, would result in increased participation in the resale market.

This is precisely what came to pass.

In June 2007, Ticketmaster’s memorandum to the Select Committee advocated that “the Government act to make the unauthorised resale of all event tickets, at higher than face value, a criminal offence through primary legislation.”

Six months later, and in light of Government opting for self-regulation, the company seemingly changed approach - acquiring GET ME IN! and citing “therecent All Party Select Committee's recommendation for a "middle way" in which the live entertainment industry works with the resale sector to provide added consumer protection.” In November 2014, Seatwave was added to the company’s portfolio, with the intention to create “best-in-class, consumer-friendly resale platforms” and offer a “better ticketing experience”.

Rather than curbing excesses in the secondary market, Government had helped stimulate an arms race - and one where touts were the beneficiaries, rather than consumers or artists.

Despite scandalous revelations uncovered by Channel 4’s Dispatches (in 2012’s “The Great Ticket Scandal) and continued pressure from politicians such as Sharon Hodgson MP and members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse, the UK’s secondary market has grown unhindered ever since. Buoyed by sky high service fees, its currently valuation is north of £1bn, much of it music-related. 

However, alongside a growing recognition of the damage wreaked by industrial-scale ticket touting, there are signs of a reinvigorated sense of purpose to do something about it.

This January, New York’s Attorney General published a hard hitting report detailing widespread abuses in the ticketing market - leading to an investigation into alleged anti-consumer practices, and a $2.6m settlement from six brokers found to be using Bots. Meanwhile, New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell is seeking support for a Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing Act - aka the BOSS Act, in homage to Bruce Springsteen - and Lin-Manuel Miranda, director of the hit Broadway show Hamilton, is backing the Better On-line Ticket Sales Act 2016 proposing fines of $16,000 for each ticket purchased by bot users.

In Japan this week, a group of artists, festivals and events have lent their support to a new anti-tout campaign #ResaleNO.

And in the UK, light touch regulations aimed at resale platforms in 2015’s Consumer Rights Act were followed this May by recommendations to Government from Professor Michael Waterson that National Trading Standards should be properly resourced to investigate and enforce breaches of consumer legislation. As we wait for Government’s response, the Competition & Markets Authority will soon publish results of a compliance investigation into practices of the Big Four.

There is also growing pressure from within the industry, most notably the FanFair Alliance, a newly-launched campaign that I am proud to be part of.

Uniting all those who wish to take a stand against industrial-scale touting, FanFair is urging Government to enforce existing consumer laws, with the aim of disrupting the touts and forcing the secondary giants to act with proper corporate responsibility.

The campaign will also look to share knowledge between artists, managers, agents, promoters and ticket sellers about positive actions to minimise unauthorised resale - and help ensure tickets end up in the right hands, and at the price they were intended.

Crucially, and unlike ten years ago, there are a growing number of fan-friendly and dynamic ticketing businesses that can help realise this goal. FanFair aims to work with these companies too. For while politicians can help regulate and bring the secondary market to heel, only when complimented by affirmative music business actions will dysfunctions of the online era be reversed. 

To sign the FanFair Declaration, please go to www.fanfairalliance.org