The Guardian Obtains Video of Touts 'Secret Plan'...
Secondary Market for those in the States...
Good morning!
I wake up to a report from The Guardian about a meeting involving the UK's secondary market, and my phone starts blowing up.
The gist:
The Guardian was at an event hosted by British resellers and the Coalition For Ticket Fairness (CTF), taping the event.
At the event, resellers shared their vision to fight legislation, lobby regulators, and limit legislation of the secondary market.
The framing of the tout’s argument and the language won’t do the touts or the groups involved any favors.
Take the 3 minutes to read the full piece and we can meet back here to discuss the situation!
How’s your morning going?
I’ve written about the UK’s take on the secondary market and how different the secondary market is viewed over the years.
So, this isn’t a new topic here.
The interesting bit about the piece is it tracks with the conversation I had with Martin Haigh in December about the secondary market.
Plus, a BBC report about the Eurovision on-sale.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the ideas here:
A high-profile case in the UK ended in jail time for a tout that sold tickets on an “industrial scale”: Full disclosure, I know Mark Woods and his attorney asked me to write a report on the differences in the secondary market between the UK and the US.
Industry leaders have applauded prison sentences for resellers: The UK’s consumer protection laws are much stronger than the US’s. In ticket terms, this is meant to stop fraud and large-scale resale.
Labour plans to offer legislation to limit resale: Polls give Labour a strong lead and they’ll have a good chance of forming a powerful ruling government.
Police have been running campaigns to educate people about ticket buying and how to avoid fraud: I’ve seen this a lot around the Taylor Swift shows.
Laura McKenna offers up her experience buying on Viagogo: The relevance here is that Laura talks about selling her tickets to see Foo Fighters as well.
What do you need to know to be smarter here?
It isn’t about resale, it is about professional resale:
When I first started going to the UK regularly, resale was still a bit of a foreign idea.
Now there are many options to resale your tickets in the UK if you can’t go to a show.
The issue at hand is professional resale and the ways that touts use to get tickets.
Labour’s plan would call for a 10% cap on resale.
Labour would offer stronger enforcement mechanisms for the CMA.
Labour would likely offer up stronger purchase restrictions.
Historically, some resellers have moved their businesses out of the UK to friendlier jurisdictions to avoid enforcement:
Viagogo has been based in Switzerland for years.
This 2017 piece gives you an idea of the context around the current conversation.
Legislators have been much more forceful in creating rules, pushing for solutions, and fighting the secondary market.
As I mentioned above, Labour is almost guaranteed to win a significant number of seats in the upcoming election, if not a majority straight away, and that will give them tremendous power to shape legislation.
To reiterate, the highlights of many of the proposals offered include:
10% cap on resale.
Limits on the number of tickets that anyone can buy.
Stronger enforcement capacity for the CMA.
The important thing to keep in mind, Labour is likely to have a mandate.
Limiting ticket touts and professional resale will be popular.
With videos and reports like today’s, Labour’s job of selling the idea will be easier.
Some resale is already illegal:
You can’t resell football tickets, but a lot of other things aren’t regulated.
What is often regulated are:
Terms & conditions
Advertising standards
Limits on ticket purchases
These conditions are where touts are being stopped and punished now.
My take:
The videos from the CTF event are bad.
The verbiage used is bad.
The lobbying language will make it difficult for legislators not to act.
The shape of the argument will be influenced by the videos from the CFT dinner.
Companies are already backing away from their association with the CTF, publicly at least.
Viagogo stated they were only at the event for “networking purposes”.
The unnamed lobbyist says that he only met with the group a few months back and would never work with them.
The promise of anonymity…yeah right!
I’ve had tons of experience with the secondary market over the years.
I’m not a hater.
I’m not a blind cheerleader.
The secondary market can have a place in the market for the sale and resale of tickets.
The dynamic at play in the secondary market right now would lead a lot of reasonable people to believe that there is no way that this is possible.
Among the common issues that get coverage:
Tickets flooding the secondary market, driving down demand, and undermining brand equity of events.
This report does not help create a positive relationship.
In reality, it highlights things that are likely to make people angrier such as:
The idea of monied interests “buying off” legislators.
The feeling that buying a ticket is “rigged” against customers.
The perception of the secondary market as shady.
These are just the public perceptions.
Industry concerns border around:
The negative impact resale can have on brand equity.
The potential for negative press.
Lost revenue from sales, data, and other monetizable situations.
These concerns aren’t limited to the UK.
These are concerns that almost every primary ticket seller has everywhere in the world.
To me, the idea of protecting your brand equity is important. It should be a top-line thought.
Negative press can harm you even if you have done nothing wrong.
For venues, teams, and performers, that suffered through the lost revenues and disruptions of COVID, the costs of putting on events have gone up. For many, attendance has gone down.
This makes the need to create and capture revenue more important than ever.
While this might seem like an isolated UK story, the heart of the story strikes at everything in tickets right now.
Back to the situation at hand: I always feel like I can find a common ground to work with folks and that’s always my advice to people on the secondary market looking to work with the primary market.
There are enough tickets to sell and there is enough money for a lot of people to make a good living.
But you have to look for and find the common ground.
What say you?
Let me know: hit reply! Or, tell me in the Slack Channel.
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Fans For Life in NYC on September 4.
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