Here’s the UK Government’s plan to ban all ticket scalping
The UK government has confirmed plans to clamp down on ticket scalping. Let’s go through it.
- Ticket reselling will be banned for concerts, sporting events, and any other live entertainment presentations.
- All tickets can only be sold for face value plus the unavoidable fees (service charges, sales tax, local entertainment levies, etc.)
- Service charges will also be capped.
- Secondary sellers and social media sites will still be able to sell tickets, but under the new rules.
- Bots? Banned.
- Anyone caught breaking the regulations could be fined up to 10% of global revenues.
As you might guess, ticket resellers in the UK are lobbying frantically, hoping that they can change the proposed law. And across the Atlantic, the National Independent Music Association, a US group, wants America to replicate what the Brits are doing about speculative tickets, resellers, and scalpers.
All this is excellent in theory, but we’ll have to see how it works in reality. Scalpers are clever buggers. And how will the inevitable black market in tickets be dealt with.
