Daily Pulse

Déjà Vu For Ticketing Panel

Although maybe a bit tame for those hoping for a bare-knuckle fight, Live UK’s ticketing panel did at least show the anti-touting brigade has found a political champion in the shape of Sharon Hodgson, the Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West.

Taking up her battle line on the moral high ground, Hodgson is trying to get the UK parliament to discuss her proposed measures for curbing the secondary market, which are set out in a private members’ motion called the Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill.

 
Joining her on the panel and in a sort of cross-party alliance was Mike Weatherley, the Conservative MP for Hove, who broadly shares her views. 
 
Neither mentioned that it was Weatherley’s Tory cronies that talked the second reading of Hodgson’s bill out of court in January 2011. She’s been trying to get it back on the order paper ever since.
 
In a nutshell, Hodgson’s bill says it’s OK to resell tickets but there should be a law against reselling them with a markup of more than 10 percent.
 
“If it works in France, then why don’t we have it here?” she told Pollstar, although her reasoning stretches beyond suggesting that the Brits should do something simply because the French are having a go at it.
 
She says she’s struck by what she perceives as the basic unfairness about the way the secondary market operates and has become something of a standard-bearer for those in the UK industry who share her views.
 
Her enthusiasm for the cause has reached major figures in the open-air business, such as Festival Republic chief Melvin Benn, head of Reading, Leeds and Latitude festivals, who wrote a piece for The Independent that strongly supported Hodgson’s call for legislation.
 
What appears to puzzle Hodgson is why party colleague and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell decided not to outlaw the secondary market in 2006. She’s eager to canvass opinions on why Jowell made such a call, particularly as Hodgson feels it must have been against the weight of all evidence.
 
Current culture secretary Jeremy Hunt appears to be of the opinion that the industry needs to sort this stuff out for itself by introducing new security measures like photo ticketing, although Benn’s piece in The Independent cautioned against that stance.
 
“[It] ignores the fact that the longer the secondary ticket market stays unregulated, the more we’ll see the emergence of a two-speed economy in the arts and culture,” he wrote.  “If legislation has worked for the Olympics in terms of making its events affordable and accessible, it can work for festival and music promoters too.”
 
During the panel, Hodgson, who has achieved some almost-celebrity status since Channel 4 aired its “Dispatches” programme in February, and got herself pictured handing Hunt a copy of it, stressed the importance of the industry speaking with one voice on the subject.
 
“The minister won’t want to hear 10 industry opinions,” she said. 
 
VAT Talent agency Dan Silver indicated that it was unlikely that the minister would get much choice.
Hodgson’s loudest voice of support at the Live UK panel, part of its annual “Summit” conference at London’s Radisson Blue Portman Hotel Oct. 9-10, came from Jef Hanlon, who chided the UK’s Concert Promoters Association members for not being more vocal – or even unanimous – in their condemnation of the secondary market.
 
The problem, according to Hanlon, a CPA member until his recent retirement, was that too many of his fellow members were mentioned in “Dispatches.” They were found to have slipped in bundles of tickets to the likes of Viagogo.
 
He was in no doubt of the need for legislation. “Voluntary measures are wonderful but they won’t work,” he said.
So, apart from witnessing Hodgson becoming a rallying point for the seemingly ever-growing anti-tout lobby, most of the talk was no more than a rerun of what was said during many of the various ticketing panels that led up to Jowell’s decision to do nothing about it. 
 
Unfortunately, at least most people in the room had probably heard it all before.
 
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