Ticket touts are costing music fans £145 million a year in the UK
New research by YouGov finds that ticket touts are costing UK music fans more than £145 million a year on concert tickets.
In partnership with O2, the study found that ticket touts, or ticket resellers who buy up sought-after seats, often using bots, to turn them over for a profit, are taking advantage of music fans to the tune of nearly £150 million. According to the research, about 1-in-5 tickets end up on ticket resale websites.
Nearly half of survey respondents reported being “not confident” in identifying legitimate resale tickets and platforms. O2, which runs the ticketing service Priority, reported catching more than 50,000 suspected touting bots on its platform.
“We are tired of professional ticket touts abusing the ticket marketplace and stealing tickets out of fans’ hands, only to immediately relist them at inflated prices”, O2 director Gareth Griffiths said in a press statement. “Music fans deserve the chance to buy tickets at a price set by their favourite artist, but all too often they are forced to pay a price decided by a stranger on the internet. Consumers deserve more protection and better information about the tickets they’re paying for.”
As a result of the research O2 is backing the FanFair Alliance campaign’s efforts against large-scale online ticket touting and calls for legislation to protect music fans from predatory resellers. They’re also asking for more clarity and explicit labeling of ticket and platform information on websites and search engines.
Read the YouGov and O2 report in full here.
In the US live event ticketing industry, the Department of Justice launched a lawsuit against Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation to break up the alleged monopoly this past May.
