Digital Economy Bill is passed, spelling bad news for Touts

Image: Belladrum Festival

Regular readers will now of our distaste for touts, and the government landed a blow to their shady endeavours today by passing the Digital Economy Billl. This spells out some key changes for secondary ticketing, with a number of clear requirements that must be listed by secondary websites when selling on tickets that have already been purchased elsewhere. They are as follows:

• The original face value of a ticket
• If it is a seated ticket, details of seat and row number
• Complete information about any restrictions which limit the use of the ticket, such as age, and, crucially, any resale restrictions
• A unique ticket number

This is important because there won't be any confusion now to just how inflated those costs are, transforming the levels of transparency secondary sites such as Seatwave, Viagogo and GetMeIn have to provide to sellers. If a ticket price is now say 750% more than it was originally was, a not uncommon price increase seen on certain sites, it'll be a lot clearer to the consumer.

The computer software which bulk buys tickets when they go on sale, dubbed bots, was made illegal earlier in the year, and this now solidifies the government's commitment to the issue - something which was

Our friends at the FanFair Alliance have been campaigning for these measures and said the following on the matter:

Going forward, it is now vital that the UK’s consumer laws are enforced, and recommendations made in the Waterson Review of secondary ticketing are fully implemented. After the General Election, we will need details on how all these changes will work in practice.

Only then, and combined with a concerted effort from industry and regulators, will this broken market be fixed and British audiences provided with the open and properly-functioning resale market they deserve. 

Remember our Re:Sell platform is a fair way of selling tickets, with them only going on sale at the current price and never at greatly increased rates. If you use initiatives like ours and stay away from overpriced secondary sites you can help keep #ToutsOut.

Read How Skiddle Combats Extortionate Secondary Ticketing and Ticket Touts.