FanFair Alliance comment - Government rejects CMA recommendations to further tighten laws around online ticket touting
11 May 2023 - Press releaseAdam Webb, campaign manager, FanFair Alliance
"In August 2021, the Competition & Markets Authority published a series of common sense recommendations to the Government that aimed to further protect consumers from being ripped off by unscrupulous ticket touts and parasitical ticket resale sites. These included new measures to clamp down on the unlawful bulk-buying of tickets and large-scale speculative fraud, where rogue traders list tickets for sale that they do not possess. Research by FanFair Alliance has shown these problems remain rampant on certain secondary ticketing platforms.
"Nineteen months down the line, and, despite overwhelming evidence of continuing bad practice, the Government has today comprehensively rejected the CMA's advice - without, we believe, consulting with experts, campaigners or the live music industry. The experiences of consumers appear to have been overlooked entirely. Although much progress has been made in recent years to tame the UK's black market for tickets, FanFair Alliance shares the views of the CMA that further action is still required to tackle these evident and ongoing problems with online secondary ticketing."
FanFair Alliance is a UK-based campaign against industrial-scale online ticket touting. Supported by managers and teams for artists including Arctic Monkeys, Ed Sheeran, Biffy Clyro, Pixies, Iron Maiden, George Ezra, Keane, PJ Harvey, Niall Horan and many others, FanFair has successfully helped change the regulatory and legislative landscape in the UK, leading to the widespread adoption of consumer-friendly practices for ticket resale.
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