The Stage

Call for Jowell to ban theatre ticket resale

Published Tuesday 6 February 2007 at 14:30 by Nuala Calvi

Managing directors of Britain’s two biggest ticketing companies will tell culture secretary Tessa Jowell this week that she must legislate against the unauthorised resale of tickets if she is serious about stamping out touts.

Ticketmaster’s Chris Edmonds and See Tickets’ Nick Blackburn say the industry has responded to calls to “get its own house in order” to counter the problem of touting, but now needs the government to take stronger action to protect consumers.

The companies are among representatives from the worlds of theatre, music, art and sport invited to the fourth ticket touting summit, held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, on February 8. At the last meeting, Jowell called on the sector to “squeeze out” touts by operating better returns policies and primary allocation procedures.

However, Blackburn told The Stage: “We have got our own house in order as far as we are able - we offer to resell tickets, we have reasonable booking fees, we do all we can to prevent multiple bookings. What else can we do?

“Given that there are severe restrictions on sales of tickets for the Olympics and premier league football, why can’t this apply to all tickets? That’s what I and other ticket companies will be saying.”

Ticketing companies say the problem of touting has snowballed in recent years with the growth of internet auction sites such as eBay. They estimate that around 20% of tickets are now being snapped up by touts specifically for resale, meaning customers regularly have to pay inflated prices.

Industry leaders see the introduction of a ban on resale of Olympics tickets in 2012 as the perfect chance to extend restrictions to the sector as a whole.

Edmonds said: “I think this is a really unique opportunity which hopefully [Jowell] will embrace. We’ll only be able to protect the consumer if we have legislation to stop this unauthorised resale of tickets.

“Historically it’s been a pretty small problem which was very much on the street. It’s the internet now that has become the tipping point. There’s huge evidence from events we’ve seen in the last year of people buying four tickets when they only need two and the intention is to see how much they can make from their resale online.”

A DCMS spokeswoman said the department wanted to hear from consumers and the industry to find out whether self-regulation was working, before it decided whether or not to legislate.

“We conducted a consumer study recently which will be reporting back to the summit,” she said. “We don’t want to introduce heavy-handed legislation if it’s not what the fans want.”