Has Tessa Made A Mess Of It Again?

U.K. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell’s speech at a summit meeting on ticket touts has drawn a mixed response from the live music industry.

Although she told the April 26 gathering at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) that she’s going to “battle to stamp out ticket touting,” many say she isn’t going forward fast enough and others think she might even be going backward.

“It’s a very watered-down strategy compared with the way that I thought that we were going forward,” Rob Ballantine from the Concert Promoters’ Association (CPA) told Pollstar after Jowell had failed to come up with any measures to deal with the rapidly growing number of “bedroom touts.”

Ballantine, a director of the Manchester-based SJM Concerts who has led the CPA negotiating team with Geoff Ellis from Scotland’s DF Concerts, also said he’s “personally dismayed” because efforts to get eBay and the secondary ticket agents to include seating information on their adverts appear to have failed.

“Why won’t eBay agree to this? If they did, it would eradicate ‘futures’ selling immediately and assist in the war against fraud,” he argued.

“EBay could insist that the seller gives a full description of the ticket on sale, including the block, row and seat number. Ebay would simply make this a ‘required field’ to fill in when the seller enters the ticket details,” he said.

At press time, eBay head of public affairs Alasdair McGowan hadn’t replied to Pollstar inquiries. Ballantine’s also concerned that the minister is inviting the secondary market to show that it can legitimise itself. He and Ellis – and the CPA – would rather see it outlawed.

He insists the artist, agent and promoter should fix the ticket price. He said re-selling for higher prices – because the market will stand it – will lead to a situation where the industry will “fleece this generation and kill off live music for the next.”

The culture secretary has said, “I want to see ticket agencies squeezing ticket touts out of business to protect genuine fans from being frozen out of the market.” But Ballantine is concerned that the “bedroom tout” is the biggest problem.

A couple of weeks before the summit meeting, Madonna‘s European tour producer John Giddings reacted to the act’s tickets being advertised on eBay within an hour of going on sale by saying, “The Internet has made touts out of us all.”

The day after the meeting, an article in The Times also said genuine concertgoers are turning tout in order to cover their own costs.

It quoted See Tickets managing director Nick Blackburn saying, “It’s not uncommon now for fans to buy four tickets for a show when they only need two. They then attempt to sell the extras on eBay to pay for their own tickets.”

If secondary sellers are ever outlawed, the legislation would need to be worded in such a way that a “bedroom tout” wouldn’t be able to sell an act’s T-shirt for £150 and throw a free ticket to see them into the deal.

Jowell said, “We need to strike a balance between stamping out organised touts who buy in bulk and the real fan who for one reason or another decides they can’t go to an event and need to sell on their ticket.”

But her plan to limit each customer to a maximum of four tickets – which most promoters already do for a hot show – doesn’t help solve that problem.

The industry has taken steps to combat the secondary agents who pose as authorised agents, even canceling the tickets that appear on their sites. But monitoring the hundreds of pairs of tickets that are showing up on eBay is a much more arduous task.

Many promoters believe legislation banning the re-selling of concert tickets, or even selling for more than face value, is the only effective answer.

According to The Times piece, an eBay spokesman said the list of new principles drawn up by the secretary of state – which will be discussed again in July – still “recognises the secondary market as a legitimate one.”

Ironically, some of the “genuine fans” Jowell wants to protect from “being frozen out of the market” have created a new secondary market of their own.

Since the minister still appears to recognise the secondary ticket agencies as having some sort of legitimacy and doesn’t seem to have picked up on the growing nuisance of “bedroom touts,” many in the live music business have voiced the opinion that she’s in danger of attracting as much criticism as she did when she represented the government during the early stages of the Wembley Stadium development.

She came in for similar flak when she introduced what came to be called the “tax on fun” part of her equally-criticised revamp of the licensing laws for alcohol and entertainment.

Last summer, The Observer said she was leading the calls within the cabinet for a ban on the unauthorised re-selling of tickets.

Apparently “stunned” by the number of touts she saw operating outside Cardiff Millennium Stadium before last year’s FA Cup Final, she was reportedly looking to extend the ban on re-selling soccer tickets to other sports and live music events.

A similar story appeared in News of The World under a heading that said “Tessa To Oust Touts.”

Fearing that the minister is now swaying toward seeing the secondary market as a legitimate one, and obviously aware of the appearance of such new organisations as the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents (ASTA), Geoff Huckstep from the National Arenas Association (NAA) is backing Ballantine’s views.

Huckstep, who succeeded Wembley Arena GM Peter Tudor as NAA chairman in February, said, “I’d read the report from the November meeting and, as a relative newcomer, left the April 26 meeting feeling disappointed because it seems to have gone backwards.”

He said what concerns him most is that secondary ticket sellers still won’t have to seek the permission of the ticket owner – which remains as the venue or promoter until the show has actually happened – before moving the ticket on.

“I think that was an important point to include in the code of practice and it seems to have disappeared from the earlier draft – that’s the one that should have been implemented,” he explained.

When asked if he thought the government allowing the secondary market into the discussion process is, essentially, offering it an opportunity to legitimise itself, he said, “I’m not sure why they’re there. They’re not stakeholders in the live music business, they’re just a by-product of it.

“They’re sucking money out of an industry that can ill-afford it and that can’t be good. The more people have to pay for tickets, the fewer tickets they’ll be able to buy.

“That doesn’t help us. Arenas are expensive places to run and we need to be hiring them out to promoters as often as we possibly can,” he said. “We have legislation that says it’s illegal to re-sell a football ticket and so why can’t that be extended to all tickets?”

The 1994 Criminal Justice Act made an exception for soccer matches because of the risk of one set of fans buying tickets for a section of the stadium that had been designated for the other team’s supporters. The law was based on avoiding soccer violence rather than stamping out touts.

It will also be illegal to re-sell tickets for the 2012 London Olympics, but that’s a result of stipulations laid down by the International Olympic Committee, not government action.

Huckstep, who runs Nottingham Arena, says he’ll be going to the next NAA meeting with every intention of recommending that the organisation gives its full backing to Ballantine, Ellis and the CPA. The meeting is at The Point in Dublin on May 18.

Among those who took a more positive view of the meeting with Jowell was world famous concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith. He told BBC News, “We are edging toward coming up with a code of practice that everyone in the industry can subscribe to in order to control ticket touting.”

Live Nation U.K. managing director Stuart Galbraith, another CPA member and a vociferous opponent of all ticket touts, said the government is showing a clear commitment to regulating the secondary market that will ultimately lead to legislation.

He acknowledged that progress may have appeared to have slowed, but insists it’s still moving in the right direction. “Politics and government take a long time,” he said.

He said he pins great hopes on the code of practice that Jowell’s department has produced.

“What she’s saying is here are the draft guidelines – now the industry must discuss how it will measure up to them.

“The secondary market won’t be able to legitimise itself. It can’t achieve that. It can’t meet the criteria,” he told Pollstar.

Galbraith, who estimates that as many as 20 percent of the tickets for a “hot show” are re-sold on the secondary market, also used the meeting to draw the government’s attention to the fact the touts don’t pay any VAT or PRS out of their profits. The government loses on one count and the artist loses on the other.

He said that, after several requests, he has now received a current list of ASTA members, so it’s possible to monitor if any of them are breaching the DCMS guidelines.

At this year’s ILMC, ASTA’s Marc Melander attended Tudor’s panel on ticketing. There he produced the newly formed organisation’s code of practice and explained how it would regulate itself.

Galbraith and Ellis were visibly annoyed when he failed to give full answers to their questions regarding the markup on the tickets and the selling of futures.

On the second point, he was keener to explain the association’s refund terms rather than promise not to sell a ticket that he doesn’t have in the first place.

Ballantine is intent on seeing some sign of government action, sooner rather than later.

Responding to questions about how the secondary ticket sellers might try to legitimise themselves, he said: “As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a secondary market.

“To me, there are only authorised and unauthorised ticket sellers.”

He said he’ll continue through the next round of talks and on through the July meeting, but said the process can only go on for so long.

“If we don’t get anywhere in July, then we’re wasting our time. We’ve attended a lot of meetings among ourselves and with the DCMS and, if we’re still not capable of making ourselves understood, then perhaps we should all go off and spend all this time doing something else.”

Following the April meeting, Jowell’s department made it clear that the government has no current plans to make touting illegal. But it is looking to identify “practical mechanisms that will make it unattractive for ticket touts to operate.”

Between now and the currently undated July meeting, which will also be held at the department’s offices in London’s Cockspur Street, the principles that Jowell and her civil servants have drawn up will be tested by the live music industry in general and the primary and secondary ticket agents in particular.

After that, all concerned will be expected to sign up to a set of principles that will make up the final code of conduct.

Among the other guidelines drawn up by Jowell and her department is the drawing up of a blacklist of known touts

The purpose is to refuse to sell to those who regularly buy in bulk. But at ILMC, Wembley box office manager Lyn Dicks told Tudor’s ticketing session how much abuse she already gets for doing just that.

To have any realistic chance of getting the legislation the CPA and NAA want, the promoters and venues will have to establish an effective returns policy for fans who bring tickets back because they can’t get to the show.

In the future, the administrative costs of refunds could become part of a show’s financial breakdown.

It’s also Jowell’s intention to ban the sale of “futures” and require secondary sellers to provide better information regarding the position of the seats they’re offering.

Any earlier references to the seller needing the permission of the promoter or venue to re-sell are, much to Huckstep’s annoyance, noticeably absent.

Jowell’s also called on fans to boycott sellers or sites that deliberately set out to either defraud them or charge them exorbitant prices.

Others who attended the DCMS ticketing summit include Ticketmaster, Live Nation, The Mean Fiddler Music Group, the Agents Association, the FA Premier League, Society of London Theatres, See Tickets, Live 8, the Rugby Football Union, England and Wales Cricket Board and the All England Lawn Tennis Club.

–John Gammon