Parliament to debate secondary ticketing

Join in the conversation as Parliament tackles touts.

Date published: 5th Sep 2018

Image: Belladrum (source)

We've always been against unscrupulous and unfair ticketing. It's something which has been integral to what we do in the seventeen years we've existed as a business, from large-scale festivals such as Belladrum to new clubnights and exciting bands.

That led us to set Re:Sell up, a direct way of making it fair for customers to sell their tickets back to real fans. The measure has since been taken up (two years later) by Ticketmaster after they shut down their secondary sites Getmein and Seatwave. 

Today the government will be debating how better to stop abuse by touts, and make secondary ticketing a fairer realm. They'll be joined by Ticketmaster, music promoters Kilimanjaro Live, FanFair Alliance (who have been excellent at lobbying for change) and two secondary sites still active, the eBay owned StubHub and Viagogo. Well one of them; Viagogo have continued their attitude and again ignored the opportunity to put forward their case.

It'd be an interesting conversation at any point, but comes at a particularly newsworthy time for the issue. As well as Ticketmaster's recent moves, Viagogo are suing Kilimanjaro, promoter of Ed Sheeran's tour, over their stance to, rightfully in our eyes, cancel tickets for the singer's shows acquired by touts - which has been derided as laughable by the company.

You can watch the debate live here, but please let us know what you think by tweeting @skiddle with your thoughts on the matter.