Reselling tickets for more than face value will be made illegal in the United Kingdom, The Guardian and BBC News report. Set to be announced this week, the plans will make good on the Labour Party’s 2024 election pledge to crack down on touting, amid the debate over rising concert ticket fees. Platforms reselling face-value tickets will be allowed to add service fees, but these will be subject to new limits, according to The Guardian. Changes to resale laws will not affect the dynamic pricing model employed by Ticketmaster and other vendors, whereby a ticket’s face value drastically fluctuates depending on demand.
An alliance of artists and consumer bodies—including Radiohead, Robert Smith, PJ Harvey, Dua Lipa, and sports fans’ organizations—issued a statement this week calling on the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Kier Starmer, to honor the pledge. The statement called for new protections to “help fix elements of the extortionate and pernicious secondary ticketing market that serve the interests of touts, whose exploitative practices are preventing genuine fans from accessing the music, theatre and sports they love.”
Representatives for resale platforms StubHub and Viagogo—which will be legally liable if users violate the law—told The Guardian that price caps risk increasing fraud by driving buyers and sellers to unregulated sites. It is unclear whether such British-based resale sites, whose profits rely on taking a percentage of the exorbitant markups charged by touts, will survive the change in legislation.
