The UK government promised to end ticket touting. So why hasn't it?

0:00Those of us of a certain vintage will remember that CDs had a track zero. So not track one, but before the track started to play, there was a little bit of music if you skimmed back. You couldn't click back, you had to sort of like scan, it was like a bit of a weird thing on my CD player. And there's one on Silent Alarm by Block Party. There was a Soul Wax one that I seem to remember on Much Against Everyone's Advice. And when I looked up online, apparently Nevermind has a hidden secret minus one or track zero track. and I now know that I don't think I've ever heard that. So one of my missions for later today will be to try and find that, which will involve finding the CD and then finding a CD player, which I don't think I own a CD player anymore.

0:48But all of this is to say that this is a new series of the Drowning Sound podcast and in this very first episode, I am joined by Helena Wadia, who co-hosts one of my favourite podcasts, the Media Storm podcast, but she's also a massive music nerd as well as a brilliant journalist. And in this episode, the next one, and hopefully more to come, Helena will be joining me to co-host this podcast because, as you might have noticed, we're now 76, I think, episodes deep. And I've been doing a lot of this on my own on most of the episodes. And it's a lot of work doing the research, like coming up with the right guests, booking the guests, um dealing with the pre-production and post-production all those kind of things so a co-pilot will be great for me and hopefully for you as listeners because you have more perspectives than just mine so in this episode we're gonna introduce it in a second but it's gonna kick off a series that's about power and double standards these are two things i've been thinking about a lot power in so much as who has it how we wield it who collectively has it and how we can collectively harness it and double standards because I just feel like so much of what's happening in the world right now goes beyond hypocrisy and that there is lots in music as there is in the rest of the world that if we actually looked at it and analyzed it and considered how we approach different things we might just think about them a little bit differently if you consider the double standards, rather than reaching straight for the this is awful or this is great.

2:30And I think that there's a lot that we're going to explore in this series. But we're going to kick off by talking a lot about the fan-led review of live and electronic music. Over 4 ,000 music fans took part in it, and the next few episodes will be dedicated to it. So this is the Drowning Sound Podcast. I'm Sean Adams, and as I just said, I'll be joined in this episode by Helen Awadia.

3:02welcome to the drowndown podcast in this episode we are going to meet kat from which and she's got a letter that she's written to keir starmer well not her person which who she works for um did you what did you make of the letter because i was a bit like whoa this is a big consumer rights publication organization and then all of the biggest organizations in music and the management companies of all the biggest bands like radio heads management signed it like did you see that that's like it's quite a lot isn't it i was quite surprised to see which leading this but once i read it i understood why they were doing that because we all know them from oh which toaster should I buy but actually no which is a body that is protecting consumer rights that is looking out for consumers so why not look out for consumers of live music it made so much sense once I read this letter and this letter is basically calling on the government to solidify their plans to stop ticket touts.

4:11Secondary ticketing. Secondary ticketing is what they call it. Which needs air quotes because it's the very polite way of saying the secondary sale of a ticket. So after someone has bought it, reselling it. And I think that as fans, we're aware that this exists. It used to be an old man in a trench coat outside of a venue opening his coat going, what do you want? Yep. Sometimes you still see that old man walking around. and then usually now it is bots plucking through the ticket queues or people that have found cheat codes to get through the queues fast buying up the tickets and then flogging them for thousands sometimes if not hundreds and as i think this letter really underscores the labor government in the uk has said that they want this to go through um they put a press release out in November saying they're going to end the resale of tickets for more than face value.

5:06And yet, we are now in April. There's been a fan-led review of live music, which says we should end selling resales of tickets for more than face value. And yet, which are writing a letter? Like, it's quite a lot, isn't it? And it's not just which they have led on this, but some of the people who have co-signed AEG, Featured Artists Coalition, Managements of Ed Sheeran, Keen, Nick Cave, Radiohead, The O2, Save Our Scene of course, Ticketmaster and Live Nation. It surprised me to see those in there alongside the Music Venues Trust and Featured Artists coalition who are the people pushing for um artists and venues in the grassroots especially and live nation currently don't do the one pound levy on all their tickets um live nation owns ticket master and there's a currently a u.s case which emma has written about in the drowning sound newsletter um which recently a jury found that the two companies should be split because it's monopoly um and i think that to see them sending a letter to kirstama alongside the arctic monkeys and fontaine's bc's management and the society of ticket agents and retailers which is probably the closest there is to like not necessarily a regulator but someone who sets the norms for tickets like the music managers forum that represents all the managers live the body that's kind of like the collective group for the live industry who are overseeing how the grassroots levy money spent but steve lemak is on the he's like one of the board or chairs of as he should be yeah um so i think that which putting this together um is really big and i'm really glad that kat was able to come in and talk to us about it and um shall we throw over to ourselves moments previous to this speaking to kat and before we get into this episode drannis sound podcast is brought to you in partnership with co-buzz and every week we make a companion playlist which you can listen to at dranninsound.org forward slash playlists and for this episode i think we might include some tracks by some of the people that have co-signed this letter i think that's the easiest thing to do yeah your standard playlist of radiohead and keen i mean there must be a keen song that i like some of that early stuff was um very light and fluffy but like i've heard some stuff they've done in recent years and weirdly i always see um the lead singer of keen when i go to like rufus wainwright gigs and things like really he's quite clearly a massive music fan and like there's a reason why they became so globally successful as they did um but yeah i've tried there's probably like an afx twin remix of keen right find for the playlist um so yeah so if you go to dranninsound.org forward slash playlists you can find the companion playlist for this episode and all of our previous episodes, including a playlist to get to know Helena and her music taste.

8:12So yes, welcome to this edition of the Drowning Sound Podcast.

8:22Welcome to the Drowning Sound Podcast. Today, we are going to talk about secondary ticketing, as it's politely known, or touts as it's less politely known, scalpers, I think people call them in America, people that essentially buy a ticket and flog it for a lot more than they bought it for in the first place. Sometimes people do that quite innocently. They've bought a ticket 18 months before a show. They want to resell it. They can do that. And we are joined by Kat from Witch. Would you like to briefly introduce yourself and what you do at Witch Magazine? Yeah, so I work for Witch. I'm a spokesperson for them.

8:53So I'll go out and talk to people like yourselves about all of the big issues that are facing consumers. I also work on their social media page so i kind of break down um everyday topics um and help spread the consumer knowledge essentially and most people will probably know which from their white goods what else does which do so that people can fully understand what you're about don't we do what don't we do and we've recently gone into like health and wellness um but yeah we're known for like you know what's the best washing machine and what's the best fridge but we kind of cover cars you know electric vehicles a big topic for us um we go we do lots of campaigns about insurance and things like that.

9:29So anything that's affecting the consumer, you name it, we're there in your corner. But as you just mentioned, which people know it from washing machines or toasters. So why was it important to focus on music, live music and ticketing? And maybe before you answer why it was important, tell us what are we here to talk about today? So in terms of what we're here to talk about today, We at which just thought it was absolutely ridiculous how people like you and me, everyday people who love events, whether that's music or that could be sport or any other event, are getting rinsed and quite frankly exploited by some of these ticketing platforms online.

10:08And it's so important that at which we talk about it because it is impacting everyone. And it's not just a music issue. It is a consumer issue. And it's millions that are being fleeced out of people online for just wanting to go to the event that they want to go to. um so yeah it's really important that we we speak on it spread awareness and get the government to act it's been about three years i think since which started campaigning on secondary ticketing i think it's about 14 15 years since there was a really big i think it was dispatches or panorama one of the two did a deep dive into fire go go and they are probably one of the better known websites that when you type in almost any artist name their google ad comes up suggesting you can buy your ticket often for a show that's not sold out yeah um and i think we did an episode with adam webb from the fanfare alliance and he was like there's a show that's not sold out in leeds and the ticket was like 1200 pounds he just like literally went online and well that's the thing i've actually spoken with adam about it it's called speculative selling where someone will list a ticket online um and then you know you assume the show's sold out you'll go and buy it but then the person you bought it off just quick loads and buys it and sells it to you for a profit it's absolutely boggling that people are getting away with this and these platforms know it's going on but you know nothing's happening so and talking about Viagogo a ticket for All Points East Day Festival in London last summer headlined by Ray the listing was priced at over£114 ,000 for one ticket on Viagogo as in six figures as in six figures it's literally like it would be funny if it wasn't like so terrible yeah like the fact that that is allowed to happen like how is not being more being done about this and i guess you look at consumer rights which does that all day every day all different types of projects products and to me i'm surprised that it doesn't happen with train or plane tickets like you wouldn't buy a plane ticket and then suddenly sell it for 10 times the price because i don't think legally you can no you can't buy a premier league ticket and suddenly flog it for loads more easily like i think because of hooligans and all sorts of things they clamp down on that yeah but yeah i could buy a ticket for a show that happens in six months time i could use a bot to get it as well because that's one of the other issues yeah and then suddenly i can make a big profit which is money as someone that works in music that's not coming back into our industry it's going into like organized crime sometimes it's going into all sorts of people laundering and washing money and like it's just absolutely insane and i guess my question for you really is like you live and work in this world of seeing consumer rights being exploited how much worse is music than other areas you look at so it's quite unique in a way that there's not like a regulator that we can kind of march to and complain to in the way that we have recently with insurance with the FCA.

13:07But it is impacting literally everyone who wants to go to these events. I mean, just this summer, resellers could pocket almost 24 million pounds this summer alone. But by the government's own research, if they put price caps on effectively, meaning that tickets can only be sold at face value, fans could save 112 million pounds annually. This is no small problem. and so it's really important that you know we go to the government and that they can implement these things include it in the king's speech to make sure that it does actually happen um so yeah we have to go directly to the government because the ticket sites are not doing anything we've been we've been having a go at them for quite a while now and it doesn't really feel like anyone's listening well this was going to be my next question because we have heard that the government have said we are camping down on secondary ticketing on ticket touts.

13:57But has there been a whole lot of action that follows those words? Yeah, on the days following our first open letter that we did, it was really promising. A few days later, the government came out saying that they were going to clamp down on it. It was feeling really positive. And even Lisa Nandy kind of implied that it was going to get included in the King's speech. We were feeling like, yeah, this is on the right track. However, recently, Ian Murray has kind of hinted, perhaps it's not going to be included in the King's speech. And the reason it's so important it's mentioned in the King's speech is because effectively we can hold them accountable if they don't do it.

14:31It's effectively like 12 months, this is what we're going to do as government. So if they don't include it, it kind of gives the impression that they're prioritizing other things, they're backpedaling. And as I've just shown with the amount of money that is in this industry that could be going to these towers, it's really important. They put their foot on the gas and make sure these things get implemented quickly. What's some of the worst examples or wildest examples of ticket touting that you've come across? So I've got my big three with me for you. So Harry Styles, which was a big one, I know everyone, everyone and their nan was trying to get tickets for him.

15:06So resellers stand to make 6.6 million pounds from Harry Styles tickets. We found that some tickets, the face value was 200 which was already quite expensive, was being listed for£3 ,622. So that's 159 % markup. And that's our least bad of the big three, just to give it a taste. Ariana Grande, which is one that was dear to my heart. I was trying to get tickets for her. Potential reprofit was£4.9 million for touts. It's not pocket change. a face value ticket of£135 was being listed for£2 ,835 which is a 274 % increase but the big one the big bad one is BTS the re-profit potential was£1.3 million but in terms of re-listing profit we found one ticket face value £450 again that's a lot that's not the tailpipe that's the face value which potentially is a question itself but that was being listed for£4 ,872 which is a 312 % markup it's just ludicrous and the thing is people do buy those tickets because people really want to see their favourite band especially I feel like when it's a band or an artist that is perhaps to that person like a once in a lifetime thing they might think okay well this is my one chance to see BTS so I'll just do it but that money is going directly in the pocket of a bad actor.

16:42Yeah. And sometimes they're not even based in the UK. And we found through our research that actually you've mentioned earlier, it's linked to organized crime. It's literally an international operation. And we found people in Dubai, in Delaware, like Delaware, someone was selling tickets for like random like pub music events nights. So it's not just these big music artists that are getting hit. It's the local events that people are selling tickets to because they're still going to make a profit there. so yeah it's not just exclusively the big names everyone is getting impacted and you've written a letter to the prime minister um and you've got it co-signed by pretty much every major organization in music from the music venues trust to live nation who are often not the best of bedfellows um there's like all of the organizations that represent artists management companies of artists like Nick Cave and Radiohead and it's a really bold letter because like the government put a press release out already saying that they're going to end ticketing and secondary ticketing and make it so that selling a ticket over the face value is illegal and yet here you are which magazine I guess which is more than a magazine now isn't it it's far broader and bigger than that I think I've said that twice now you're having to hold the government to account And as music fans and as consumers, obviously your focus is on all sorts of consumers, but music fans don't have a body that represents them.

18:13And it seems crazy to me that I can sit back and watch a letter be handed to the prime minister with all the right people saying all the right things that we want to make this happen. So why isn't it happening? Well, that's the thing. That's what's so frustrating is that we thought we were making good progress, but I think deep down, we also kind of knew don't get too excited until it's in the King's speech, because ultimately that is what needs to happen to ensure that movement is made. And potentially there might be prioritizing other things, but as we've discussed, it's so important. It's impacting everyday life, everyday people with the hard-earned cash.

18:52And in this economy, not everyone's treating themselves that often. If your favorite artist comes by, sorry to bring her up again but ariana grande like she doesn't go she doesn't go on tour very often and she's explicitly said she's not going to go on tour for a while after this you know and if i have you know if i had got a ticket that would have been really really exciting so the idea that um they're not taking it seriously i think is is a mistake and you know they should be focusing on it and for those fans who are maybe feeling quite hopeless about all of this and are feeling priced out and often sometimes especially the big artists if I try and get a ticket I just feel completely hopeless like I just think oh god it's going to be a complete nightmare do you see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel with clamping down on secondary ticketing I like to think so I think you know which we like to think that you know good will prevail um what timeline that happens on is very clearly to be seen.

19:51But we like to think there is light at the end of the tunnel. We've seen reforms happen in other areas. Why can't it happen here? We just have to hope that the government steps up and make sure that these ticketing companies act accordingly and these secondary ticketing sites are acting in a fair way and aren't exploiting and rinsing their customers. So one of the other big things with secondary ticketing, and I think this is mentioned in the fan-led review of live music is that fans don't often know when they buy a secondary ticket if it's a legit website like there's no and people are scammed out of huge sums of money like action fraud um perhaps made some numbers last year which are eye-boggling um brain-boggling what's the right word for that mind-boggling mind-boggling and is that something else that you see in terms of the protections like if there wasn't the ability to sell a ticket for more than face value there's potentially more chance of fans not being fraudulently scammed out of their money so that's an argument that some of these secondary ticketing websites have made um quite frankly i not no i don't i don't think that's an issue um you know if there's a price cap put in place um that will deter touts from from buying all these tickets because they know they can't sell it for extortionate amounts um so we kind of think that's a non-argument really i think that's just kind of a bit of a rebuttal but it doesn't really make much sense so I'm not really we're not really concerned about that are there other examples of people buying a product and then selling it on for more than they bought it for like I can't think of many things that you'd go out and buy new and then just like resell like is that something that's like consumers are protected from in other ways like I can't imagine for instance going out and buying a laptop like maybe I buy it second hand if it was underpriced on a second hand site and make a little bit of profit it's like a vintage iphone yeah anything i can think of is like crypto nft or something that's not even real but yeah yeah it doesn't really happen does it it's just in this it's just in this situation um yeah unless it's like someone famous owned an item or something like that but yeah it just doesn't happen so why is it okay to happen here it just doesn't make sense and do you think that the government on the whole is quite good with looking like this feels to me like a really popular thing to protect music fans yeah like do you not think this is like quite an open door that you're pushing on like it's like quite an open goal for the government to you know take this policy everyone's that i don't think you're going to find a single person who's going to be anti not being ripped off for their ticket so yeah it kind of seems like an open goal which is why we're hoping the government will include it in the king's speech and not kind of u-turn on that on effectively break their promise because they have said that they're gonna you know i think it's renew britain and you make it more fair for everyone um this would be a good starting step wasn't that slogan change the government when like labor's campaigned they were going to change things yeah this feels this feels like a really obvious change a good change we'd recommend it Yeah.

22:57Well, the joint statement is really powerful. We will link to it in the show notes and encourage people to look into the work that you do day in, day out with other things, which is one of those rare institutions which is trusted to the point that big companies will be so excited when you stick your five star review on the side of a kettle or something. like and i think that it would be great if we're ticketing we could see the same kind of like this is a site you can trust to buy your tickets from yeah like as a fan you know that this like for instance twickets i've used several times to get a ticket at the last minute buying off another fan who just happened not be able to make it like and i think those that's a great example because there's a price cap right you cannot sell it for more than face value you have to prove it as well and someone else can buy the same product.

23:48Pop it on the wait list. So the solutions are there. They just need to be made more widely available because not every platform has that. I think sometimes Twickets, unless if you get the ticket too close to the event, you can't upload it or something. In that situation, maybe that's when people turn to other platforms. I don't know. But that's what we need. We need a very clear, safe and secure secondary ticketing route for customers to use. I'm going to leave people with a statistic which won't shock anyone that's listening to this. but 91 of the 8101 people that responded to the music fans voice survey last year said that ticket reselling at higher higher than face value should be outlawed in the uk that's 8 000 music fans speaking the government's fan-led review of live music had 4 000 music fans respond to it and they also underscored almost exactly the same percentage of people um and the survey like is so thorough and i encourage music fans to go out and read it because beyond ticket caps there's so much more that the live industry needs to be addressed and it's a really brilliant piece of work it's 100 pages with 50 solutions um and there's loads the government can take on and they've got two months but hopefully the first thing they will say is we've read the fan-led review we've read the layer from which yeah we're going to protect music fans from predatory purchases of tickets reselling them at way more than the price none of that money is going back into the music industry or little of it is going back into the music industry and that is all money that should be flowing to the artists the venues and the entire ecosystem of music and knowing how hard it is at the grassroots of music those thousands and millions of pounds that you talked about yeah that is all money that the industry needs like even if that was going to ariana grande a percentage of it would go to her booking agent percentage of it would go to the venue and a percentage of that money then be reinvested because her management company would be able to take on more staff yeah would then manage more artists would develop artists and then put money into them yeah venues be able to take a bit more risk and maybe bring a ticket price down so more people can afford to go to a show so there's loads of reasons why this is really important it's like local venues as well you know it employs all the local staff it really does have real life impacts it's not a victimless crime so yeah thank you for the work you're doing and for this great later and getting so many people across the industry to co-sign with you which is like frankly often quite rare yeah and to see collective action like that in the music industry like it takes a trusted organization like which to do that so thank you yeah well change needs to happen let's hope it does this episode of the drannin sound podcast is presented in partnership with cobus The platform that pays artists four times more than the industry standard, that has high quality audio, that has human curation, which as a human curator is something that I truly value over the kind of algo slop that you get on some platforms.

26:51You can really hear the difference. I know lots of places talk about the audio qualities. And as soon as I moved across, it sort of felt like I was rediscovering music, which is one of the platform slogans. if you're worried about your playlists you can use soundiz it's a really good tool that's part of the sign up process when you join cobuzz it just transfers everything across if you'd like a free trial of this platform that's independently owned and made for music enthusiasts head to drownedinsound.org forward slash playlists where you can hear not only our playlists but get a free trial you can also find these details in the show notes to this episode and now back to this episode of the Drowning Sound podcast brought to you in partnership with Cobuzz.

27:47Helena, what did you make to what Kat had to say? I'm like, I really like just listening to like what Witch does outside. And like, we had a little chat with her afterwards and it sounds like a really great company to work at. And like, I always see them as like an institution, like i think there's there's something really interesting about them yeah but it seems like they're really built around morality and ethics which is really what is the key part of this whole push to stop secondary ticketing is it's all based on ethics and morals that the reason that this should be stopped is yes it's exploitative but also it's just wrong like ethically it's wrong and it is damaging our communities.

28:32So it was nice to go a bit further into that and to maybe understand as a music fan that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is, if they can get this measure of ending ticket touting and a price cap on reselling tickets into the King's Speech, that means they can hold the government accountable. So there's a timeline, you know, there's a timeline in place. We may not know the exact dates, but it's good to know that there's movement on this. And it's not just hopeless. I mean, it's that crazy thing that Parliament's going to close like soon because there's local elections. And then there's hardly any sitting days before they break for summer recess.

29:18Yeah. When you actually look at how many days Parliament sits, it's not that many. Like they're not there on Fridays and like they don't sit on weekends unless there's... Sounds quite nice, isn't it? I know. But obviously MPs have lots of other words to do other than just debating in Parliament. But I think that the wheels of power, like from the outside, it's so strange to like, think that we've voted these people in. Like Labour have such a huge, huge mandate and such a huge amount of, it's not like they've got like a majority of 10 or something. They've got a majority of hundreds. And as someone who was part of a tactical voting campaign to help them get elected yes um helping tories lose by 10 to 20 votes in some seats where the vote is normally split and they've had 70 to 100 years of dominance to see these labor mps just kind of whittle away their power is pretty frustrating yeah i really hope that organizations like which shouldn't need to do this but the fact they can bring all these people together and put pressure on people because what was going through my mind during that conversation is is there a Klarna link when you go to buy a 1200 pound ticket so that you can break it down and get a loan in order to buy your expensive ticket because not everyone buying these expensive tickets is rich and well off some people are just obsessed with an artist yeah and will stick it on their credit card and think about it another day and like if all your friends are going to a show and it's your best friend's birthday yeah you missed out on a ticket you could be pushing yourself into personal debt because of the fact that there aren't these regulations in place and yes you might hold out and hope that someone puts a ticket onto a kits or dice has returns yeah um as kat was saying like this isn't all about stadium and arena gigs yeah this is happening smaller shows where often it's not even sold out and someone might be panicking thinking i really need a ticket for this thing that I've promised I was going to go to and like you can see how you wouldn't have the same issue with a train ticket yeah you wouldn't have the same issue with a plane ticket like I can't suddenly find a cheaper ticket because someone has bought it and is reselling it yeah and that's the same with the like I was going to say tiered pricing but when there's more demand and they do what an uber does where the price goes up when it's raining oh dynamic pricing yes Yes, dynamic pricing.

31:43So yeah, so things like dynamic pricing is different again, because that's something which the ticketing industry has put in to try to reflect the demand, even though almost always they can predict the demand. I don't think anyone didn't predict that Oasis was going to have a lot of demand. It wasn't going to sell tickets. Exactly. But I think they've even referred to how it works for Oasis as a different type of dynamic pricing. Anyway, live music, we love it. It's amazing. the companies that make huge profits from it not as amazing but live nation have signed this letter they they agree that secretary ticketing is bad so there's hope yeah there's hope and that's what this podcast is all about yes hope solutions and what you as music fans can do so i guess in terms of this letter like if you see it online repost it spread the word that kia starmer and the labor government need to push back against these predatory come on guys one thing you can do right let's do it let's do it pretty small it's gonna be very popular you should get on and do this like and i hope by the time we've published this podcast that this is obsolete and they've done it all the time someone's listened to it in a few weeks time um but helen i think you've joined me today i've been sean adams the host of the dron and sound podcast and we'll be back next week with a special edition where me and you go through the fan-led review and really dive into this 100-page report, what it means for the industry, what it means for fans, and hopefully give people a good top level.

33:12So they don't have to read all 100 pages, but it only takes about 15 minutes. And I'd really urge every fan that probably spent 15 minutes filling in the survey to dive in and read it, because I really feel heard by reading it. I felt quite emotional the way they talked about music in it, which I know is going to sound strange for a fan-led review report but I'll explain why in the episode. So yeah so thanks for joining us. This has been the Drowning Sam podcast. I have been Sean Adams. You have been. Helen Awadia. And you have been you. See you next time. Bye.