Bands including One Direction and Arctic Monkeys have joined with music trade bodies to urge Government action against online ticket touts.
The new campaign, dubbed the FanFair Alliance, was launched by Arctic Monkeys manager Ian McAndrew on Thursday in London.
It said secondary ticket sales are thought to be worth more than £1 billion per year. The FanFair Alliance is also concerned about the “industrial scale” of ticket re-sales on the black market.
One Direction pictured at the AMAs (Matt Sayles/Invision/PA)
The aim of FanFair Alliance is to protect both artists and consumers from touts who resell concert tickets at inflated prices on secondary market websites.
At the Somerset House event, Mr McAndrew said fans will “continue to be ripped off” if the issue is not taken more seriously. “The aim of the FanFair Alliance is to take a unified stand against rampant profiteering in the secondary ticketing market. We are also urging the Government to take measures and commit resources to enforce existing legislation.”
He continued: “With that in place, we can seriously disrupt the more egregious touts and help get more face value tickets into the hands of fans.”
Arctic Monkeys back a new campaign (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
A coalition of managers, artists and industry bodies have joined forces in the fight against online ticket touts.
A declaration against online ticket touting has been signed by the managers of artists that include Little Mix, Jess Glynne, Ed Sheeran and Noel Gallagher, in addition to music bodies.
In February, tickets for Adele’s UK tour were being advertised online for as much as £25,000 each.
Adele at Glastonbury (Yui Mok/PA)
The London-born singer hit out at the touts during one of her London shows and branded them “terrible people”.
FanFair Alliance cited recent sell-out shows for Black Sabbath, among others, in their campaign. They said 11,695 tickets for the rock band’s 2017 UK arena tour were listed for re-sale within minutes of the general sale.
FanFair Alliance is urging the Government to take four key steps to stamp down on online ticket touting.
Adele has criticised ticket touts (Yui Mok/PA)
Stronger enforcement of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is one of its objectives.
The FanFair Alliance would also like more transparency so that fans know from whom they are buying.
They said secondary ticketing platforms should “show proper corporate responsibility”.
Finally, FanFair Alliance said the abuse of technology to buy tickets for re-sale should be a criminal offence.
Fans are also being encouraged to sign up to the campaign at the FanFair website.
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