Mark SavageMusic correspondent
Pop stars including Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Sam Fender, Radiohead and The Cure have called on Sir Keir Starmer to honour his election promise to protect fans from online ticket touts.
More than 40 musicians have signed a letter urging the UK prime minister to “stop touts from fleecing fans” and cap the price that can be charged when tickets are resold.
The government launched a public consultation on the issue in January after complaints from fans, saying it would tackle touts who “are systematically buying up tickets on the primary market and reselling them to fans at often hugely inflated prices”.
But seven months after the consultation closed, there has been no indication of when legislation might be introduced.
‘Ripped off’
New research from Which? magazine found that some tickets to see Oasis at Wembley Stadium this summer were listed for as much as £4,442.
According to analysis by the Competition and Market Authority (CMA), tickets sold on the resale market are typically marked up by more than 50%.
In January, the government said it was considering a price cap of up to 30%.
Dan Smith from indie-pop group Bastille said “it seems crazy” that fans aren’t protected from price hikes, when countries like Ireland and Australia have introduced caps on ticket resales.
“It’s not surprising that the idea of a price cap has such widespread support from bands and artists,” he said.
“With the support of the government we can all move to a situation where people no longer get ripped off by touts and genuine fans can easily resell unwanted tickets for their original price.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Culture said: “This government is fully committed to clamping down on touts and is going further to put fans back at the heart of live events.
“We have carefully considered evidence provided in response to our consultation earlier this year and will set out our plans shortly.”
The government’s consultation also proposed limiting the number of tickets that resellers can offer.
In the letter, artists including PJ Harvey, Mark Knopfler, Amy MacDonald, Iron Maiden and Nick Cave joined consumer organisations in urging the government to respond to the consultation “as soon as possible, and commit to include legislation on a price cap in the next King’s Speech”.
They said the move would “restore faith in the ticketing system” and “help democratise public access to the arts”.
The letter comes as Which? found prolific sellers in Brazil, Dubai, Singapore, Spain and the US hoovering up tickets for popular US events before relisting them at inflated prices on sites like StubHub and Viagogo.
The findings echoed a BBC investigation this summer, which discovered teams of overseas workers bulk-buying tickets for concerts in the UK to resell for profit.
The watchdog found it was often difficult for fans to establish the seller’s identity or to contact them – despite the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) securing a court order in 2018 requiring Viagogo to reveal the identity of traders.
Which? also found evidence of speculative selling – when tickets are listed on secondary sites even though the seller has not bought them yet.
Which? consumer law expert Lisa Webb said the joint statement issued on Thursday “makes clear that artists, fan organisations and consumers reject the broken ticketing market that has allowed touts to thrive for too long”.
Resale sites like Viagogo and Stubhub claim a price cap could push customers towards unregulated sites and social media – putting them at increased risk of fraud.
In football’s Premier League, where resales are forbidden because the sport must abide by stricter laws than music events in order to maintain segregation in stadiums, the BBC recently uncovered a black market for match tickets, with some exchanging hands for tens of thousands of pounds.