#Toutsout Ticketing Summit

Virtually all participants were anti-secondary ticketing in times when the worldwide value of the secondary market is estimated at $8 billion. Panelists highlighted the role of bots in particular. Songkick’s Matt Jones quoted statistics showing that computer bots bought the vast majority of tickets, which ended up on the secondary market shortly after. “There’s nothing worse than explaining to the artist, why their show sold out but there were still rows of empty seats,” ATC Live’s Alex Bruford said.

The panelists discussed a variety of possible solutions to tackle touts. Ben Lovett of Mumford and Sons said his band had “tried everything” from holding back tickets to paperless ticketing to credit card-only tickets to working with Twickets, which allows only for a face value resale. Personalized tickets were mentioned quite often. And while panelists agreed that increasing staff at the entrance to check every ID was a big hassle, they also agreed that it was effective.

Ticket allocation was another issue. ITB’s Lucy Dickins said that as an agent she battles hard to get anything above 30 to 40 percent. This was mostly due to exclusive deals between the venues and the major ticketing operators. Lovett added that the only way to get a 100 percent allocation is to play a venue no one wants to go to. Sammy Andrews from Entertainment Intelligence was the data expert on the panel.

She highlighted the insights that could be gained from analyzing meaningful data and the ways in which those insights could be used to grow the overall live business. And while the big ticketing companies were already reluctant in sharing their customer data, there was virtually no data available on the secondary market.

“The data trail ends there,” she said. Another major issue was the lack of enforcement of existing laws such as the Consumer Rights Act, which already includes ticket resale provisions. Prof. Michael Waterson, who was assigned with reviewing the UK’s secondary ticketing market last year, said: “In my view, if you have a piece of legislation the first thing is that you try and enforce that before thinking about other legislation.”

He added that purchasing tickets in the music space was very complicated compared with the sports sector, leading to confusion among consumers, what with many different vendors even before taking the secondary market into account. Most professionals present echoed this stance, agreeing that the music industry was still asking one question far too seldom: what does the consumer want?

Waterson echoed Live Nation by stating that flexible pricing could take the wind out of the secondary market’s sails. Ticketmaster UK MD Andrew Parsons, who was among the audience, pointed out that some artists might want to charge more for the best seats and front rows, hence locking in the price at a fixed value may not always be the best solution. Some, like Key Music’s Adam Tudhope, disagreed, saying that charging certain fans more than others was exactly what they wanted to prevent.

Others, like Kilimanjaro Live’s Stuart Galbraith, said, “It’s up to the artist. Some want to apply measures, some will want to enable resell.”

The summit also saw the launch of a guide for music managers and artists to tackle online ticket touting, called #toutsout, compiled by the Music Managers Forum and the recently launched FanFair Alliance. It suggests three main measures: Applying tighter terms and conditions to control transferability of tickets (such as printing names on tickets), ensuring fans have clear information about those terms at the point of sale, and offering a face value resale or reallocation option for ticket-buyers who are genuinely unable to attend an event.

The guide contains a 10-step list to tackle touts as well as a few case studies, in which promoters and agents share success stories in curbing the secondary market. The guide is available as a free download on fanfairalliance.org.