The UK Gets More Serious About Abuse in the Concert Ticket World
The whole planet has a problem with concert tickets. How can we make sure that robots don’t elbow us meatbags out of the way when it comes to buying tickets online? The UK is one of many jurisdictions looking into the situation that they called “digital harvesting software.” This is from Music Week:
The Culture, Media and Sport Committee has written to culture secretary Karen Bradley to raise its concerns about the operation of the event ticketing market following last week’s evidence session on ticket abuse.
Executives from StubHub, Ticketmaster and eBay were quizzed on company practice during the three-hour meeting inside the House Of Commons. Tempers frayed as Paul Peak (head of legal, Europe StubHub) and Ticketmaster UK chairman Chris Edmonds provided answers MPs deemed unsatisfactory to questions about transparency and security checking of their users.
The committee, whose letter to the culture secretary can be read in full here, considered that the evidence collated highlighted “inappropriately close relationships” between those selling tickets on the primary market and the resellers on the secondary market – and has now called for an HMRC investigation.
Read the whole article here.