David Nuttall
Main Page: David Nuttall (Conservative - Bury North)Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill
David Nuttall Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I beg to move, that the Bill be now read a Second time.
The reason for my bringing forward the Bill should be obvious to hon. Members who have turned up today, even those who have done so perhaps only to oppose it. To demonstrate the problem, I will paraphrase from an article in The Times of 25 September 2010. At 8.50 am, Rachel Still switched on her computer and waited. At 9 am precisely, tickets for a gig by Brandon Flowers in London were to go on sale. A few minutes before 9, Rachel logged on to the ticket website and began the repetitive formula for buying tickets. At 9.1 am she was told that the gig had sold out. Her friends told her that they had received the same message at 8.57 am, before the tickets were even officially released. Within minutes those same tickets were appearing on secondary websites at prices way above the £25 face value, the cheapest one being £74. A survey showed that of the 2,300 tickets sold, 616 were instantly re-advertised—more than a quarter. No doubt there would be more to follow closer to the date too, as it is common practice to drip-feed more tickets on to the market at a sufficiently slow pace to keep the prices high.
That situation plays out time and again in homes up and down the country—ordinary fans trying in vain to get tickets, only to find that they have sold out within minutes. The disappointment is then compounded when they see that the touts do not have the same problems as they do in finding large numbers of tickets. I know all this because it has happened to me and to my teenage children, and I know we are not alone.
When I first tabled the Bill, after the private Member’s Bill ballot, the media attention prompted lots of people to write to me, expressing their support for action to tackle ticket touting. They ranged from academics to ordinary fans, and all had a story to tell. The story that stood out most prominently, though, was that—
Mrs Hodgson
Not at the moment. There will be plenty of chances for Government Members to speak. We have plenty of time, and I will give way when I have got further into the substance of my speech.
The story that stood out most prominently was that of a gentleman who used to work at a media event venue, which I will not name. He told me that it was common practice for the box office managers to cream off all the best seats to sell to touts at a mark-up of 50% before they even went on sale. Then, when the tills opened, they would simply put in the face value and issue a receipt for them all. I suspect security has improved since those days, but there is no doubt that the levels of reward on offer and the lack of regulation mean that many tickets never even reach the legitimate market at face value.
Even the big players in the secondary market recognise that, from the consumer’s perspective at least, there is a massive problem with this market. I quote Graham Burns, chairman of the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents, who said in a Sunday Times article in November:
“The ordinary fan is screwed. The decks are stacked against them. Try and buy a front-row seat at a bestselling concert at face value. It can’t be done.”
The aim of the Bill is to redress that balance—to give consumers back the power and to help event organisers choose how they want their tickets to be available and for how much.
While I initially approached the Bill from a fan’s perspective, I quickly got a better picture of the industry’s perspective as I met people who had got in touch about it, but I think the most strikingly unjustifiable part of the secondary market is the resale of charity tickets. Later in my speech I will go into some detail about the experience of the Teenage Cancer Trust, but I came across another, briefer example in The Sunday Times. Like the Minister’s boss, I too am a fan of some of Rupert Murdoch’s news output.
That example was the sale of Help for Heroes tickets. The gig was at Twickenham in September, and featured Robbie Williams, Gary Barlow and Tom Jones, who had freely given their time and names to support an incredibly worthy cause. Tickets for the event were being touted on secondary websites at an average of £106, despite the fact that the face value of an ordinary ticket was £46.75 and that the tickets clearly said on the back that they were not to be resold. The touts are earning more than the charity here, and if any hon. Member can convince me that that is right, I will happily withdraw my Bill and sit down.
Mrs Hodgson
I certainly will do so, and I will pass on all the correspondence that I have received from the senior Operation Podium officer. I do not think he would want me to name him on the Floor of the House, but he has met officials from the Home Office—I know that that is not the Minister’s Department—to discuss the issue. I am sure he would be delighted to meet the Minister and explain how things have moved on quite considerably since the then Government and Select Committee looked at them. I have used the term “green light”. The decision that my Government, and the cross-party Select Committee made was seen as a green light to the criminal fraternity to begin to exploit the whole market. I am sure that the officer would meet the Minister in a flash, because the police need to get the situation right before the Olympic tickets go on sale in March. He would be thrilled to know that the Minister wanted to meet him.
Given the large amounts of money that could be made on premium tickets for major finals, the police do not believe that the sanction for individuals caught touting tickets for the Olympics—a level 5 fine, as I mentioned—is a sufficient deterrent. As I said, many people would regard it as just an occupational hazard, pay the fine and carry on straight away selling more tickets. That issue is addressed by clause 2(6), which emphasises prosecutors’ ability to consider whether the case should be looked at by a Crown court under section 70 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, so that touts know that £5,000 is not the absolute maximum that they can be fined.
Mr Nuttall
Is the hon. Lady saying that she has decided to restrict the offence to level 5 because of an order under the Proceeds of Crime Act? Why not a higher level?
Mrs Hodgson
It could be higher, but a level 5 offence is laid down in the Olympics legislation, which I have used as the basis for the legislative framework of the Bill. It was deemed an appropriate level. However, as I said, officers at Operation Podium have said they do not consider that strong enough. They would like to talk to Ministers about the current legislation and the possibility of extending it to other entertainment industries, such as those I am speaking about.
Officers have also pointed out that the mainstream secondary marketplace—the websites that consumers tend to trust, such as viagogo, Get Me In! and eBay, as we have just heard—do not prevent professional touts from selling on their websites. A member of the public contacted me on Twitter when they heard about the Bill to say that they had once received an e-mail which was obviously intended for regular sellers on one of those sites, recommending that they buy tickets for certain events from the primary retailer purely in order to sell them on through such a site.
Whether that is true I cannot be certain, but there seems no reason for that person to lie to me. If it is true, it shows that at least one of those websites actively encourages touting and sees itself more as a broker than as a fan-to-fan exchange. Many of these organisations now call themselves ticket brokers. viagogo is the only one of those sites to get in touch with me about the Bill. Unfortunately I was not able to meet its representatives, but a member of my office, Mike Forster, did. They told him that a majority of their sellers sell fewer than six tickets a year so could not be considered big operators.
That is fair enough, but I still question whether a person selling tickets to six events a year is doing so as a genuine fan who cannot go to those events. Perhaps some of them might have been unlucky, and things seem to crop up whenever they buy tickets for a gig, but I would hazard that many of them are simply amateur touts without the time and infrastructure enjoyed by some of the bigger operators. That leaves the rest of the traders who are selling tickets to more than six events a year—there can be little doubt that those people are doing it as a deliberate money-making exercise, rather than just disposing of surplus tickets.
The police officers I met also raised the issue of how some of the big operators acquire so many tickets. What they said echoed some of the reading that I have done on the subject. The more IT-literate Members among us will know what I mean by a botnet. For those who do not, it is a network of computers—maybe the ones that we all have at home—which have been infected by a virus that allows the originator of that virus to control the terminal. It is a valuable commodity for hackers. Sometimes they are hired to carry out denial of service attacks on websites, and direct so much traffic to a particular website that it buckles under the strain. Members may remember that an anonymous group used this tactic to bring down sites such as PayPal and MasterCard after these withdrew their services to the WikiLeaks website just before Christmas.
The same method can be used in conjunction with numerous credit cards and bank accounts to evade the systems that primary retailers have put in place to stop one person buying up lots of tickets. I read an article on the technology news website The Register in November, which chronicled the case of a gang of touts in the US using Bulgarian hackers to buy scores of tickets automatically to gigs such as Bruce Springsteen, as well as Broadway musicals and major league baseball games. They were eventually indicted on charges of hacking, but by that time they had been operating for seven years, selling an estimated 1.5 million tickets, earning them $25 million. That is not small change.
This practice is of course illegal, but the vast profits to be made mean that it is an attractive and simple way for professional touts to do business, and it is very difficult to detect amid the usual high levels of traffic that a primary ticketing website gets when it first releases tickets for a major event. That illustrates that fans and touts are not competing on a level playing field when buying tickets, which is why such large numbers of tickets reappear almost instantly on the secondary market. That also illustrates why it is difficult for primary ticketers to take the lead in preventing touting. They already do a lot that they should not have to do, such as limiting the number of tickets that can be bought in one go and using word-recognition software, but the problem keeps getting worse. If computer whizz kids can hack into the Pentagon and GCHQ, finding a way around security on a ticket website is child’s play.
Those involved in Operation Podium have welcomed the Bill and see it as a necessary measure to tackle the criminal and organised elements that dominate the secondary market. They know that it can be policed—a point that I am sure Government Members are ready to bring up—because they are policing it now in preparation for Olympics tickets going on sale. They know that they can police it across borders because they are doing so now. The Olympics legislation does not limit jurisdiction to processes that happen solely on British soil, because the internet allows people to get around that easily. The Bill will follow that precedent. Those working in Operation Podium know that this is the right way to go, and I hope that their professional judgement will be taken into account by the Members.
Mrs Hodgson
They should not necessarily have to raise that issue with eBay to get the money back. What is more, the charity told me last night that it does not want venues to be full of people who can afford to pay the prices that the touts charge for tickets. That is not the purpose. It wants genuine fans to come along—not venues full of elites, paying hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
Mrs Hodgson
No, I am going to carry on.
A large part of the fundraising activities to support the trust’s wonderful work is the running of a series of live entertainment events at the Royal Albert hall, featuring major artists and comedians who give their time for free to support the trust. Last summer, in its 10th year at the Royal Albert hall, it put on nine spectacular gigs featuring Suede, the Who, Noel Gallagher, the Arctic Monkeys, Jimmy Carr and Noel Fielding. As a big fan of talent TV shows, I would particularly have enjoyed seeing JLS, Diana Vickers and Lemar perform on the same night. I see that some Conservative Members are looking confused about some of these names. If they see me afterwards, I will certainly explain any pop culture references that they do not get. I might even be able to put together a compilation CD for them.
All these artists freely give their time—as well as that of their support crew—their energy and their talent to support what they view as a worthy cause, but it is not simply a case of artists giving up a night off. Doing a gig in London lessens demand for any other gigs in London that they might have planned close to that date. It could be that they cannot perform in London again for a few weeks or even months, so their participation is a genuine expression of their desire to help the cause. These big names could easily have done other things to earn money on the night they performed. The very fact that they are involved means that demand for tickets is huge.
Even though the Teenage Cancer Trust knows that demand for its events could allow it to sell the tickets at a higher price, it wants the events to be affordable to the average fan. As at almost all live entertainment events, tickets are sold at a price below what the market will bear, because organisers recognise the fact that the sustainable approach to putting on live events is to allow as many genuine fans as possible—and especially as many young people as possible—to attend. Quite apart from any moral or ethical consideration, that makes good business sense, building a long-lasting relationship with fans, which could not be achieved if they felt that they were being ripped off or could not even begin to get on the first rung of the ladder.
Regular-priced tickets to extraordinary events run by the Teenage Cancer Trust are put on sale with all the standard technological measures in place to combat touts. Like all other big events, they sell out in the space of a morning—sometimes in an hour or two. On the same day, without fail, hundreds of those tickets reappear on secondary websites at massive mark-up prices—well over double their face value.
Philip Davies
I agree with my hon. Friend on many things, but not on this. I believe that if I sell a product to somebody else who hands over the money that I have asked for to purchase it, I have ceded that product to that person. That is the whole point of the free market. If somebody goes into a supermarket, buys a product and sells it on, I do not believe that the supermarket should have a go at that customer for doing that; once it had sold it, it was that person’s to do what they wanted with it.
The issue comes up in all sorts of things outside sporting and cultural events. We did not have time to go into other matters during the speech made by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, but I would be interested to know how she feels about them.
To save any misunderstanding, I make it clear that I am not arguing from a personal interest perspective, but there is often a big hoo-ha in the press when a limited edition of designer handbags goes on sale in Selfridge’s or some other big department store, and there is a huge queue outside to buy the 25 available. Alternatively, Buzz Lightyears go on sale at Christmas—everybody wants one, but there are hardly any left. Massive queues form outside overnight. The lucky 20 dash in and buy the few available and within five minutes flat the product is on eBay being sold at 20 times the price because the person who bought it knows that there is a much bigger demand than the shop was able to accommodate.
I am not entirely sure whether the hon. Lady or the hon. Member for Dudley North are suggesting that, from their party’s perspective, it is the Government’s job to start regulating all these matters, so that if somebody buys somebody else’s intellectual property and then uses the free market to sell it at 25 times the price, the Government should stop that. If the hon. Lady or the hon. Gentleman are suggesting that, I should like them to stand up and say so; if they are not, perhaps they will explain what the difference is between somebody who buys a ticket to an event and somebody who buys a limited edition of a Buzz Lightyear, a handbag or anything else. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Hove could do the same. I see no difference at all. It seems to me that once the Government go down the road of controlling the market in tickets, they are opening up the floodgates, or a slippery slope, of intervening in every single nook and cranny of the commercial world.
Mr Nuttall
That raises the interesting question of what would happen in the stamp market. People often buy stamps, especially commemorative issues, for the purpose of holding on to them for a number of years in the hope of selling them on for a profit.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend’s question helps to illustrate the point: where would it end if the Government went down such a road? Where would it all end indeed?
It does not surprise me at all that the Labour party wants to interfere in every nook and cranny of everybody’s lives—what they buy, how much they can sell it on for and all that kind of business; that is its raison d’être as a political party. However, I hope that the one thing that the coalition Government will not do is adopt that kind of socialist agenda. That would be very worrying indeed.
The hon. Lady talked about how popular the issue was among the general public, if not among her own colleagues. However, I take issue with the notion that the reselling of tickets is unpopular; I am not entirely sure that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that. ICM conducted some opinion polls on this matter. As I mentioned earlier, 86% agreed with the statement:
“If I had a ticket to a sporting event, concert or other event that I could no longer use then I should be allowed to resell it”.
Some 83% agreed with the premise:
“Once I’ve bought a ticket it is my property and I should be able to sell it just as I can any other private property”.
That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). Some 86% agreed:
“It shouldn’t be against the law for people to resell tickets that they no longer want or can’t use.”
The hon. Lady, or her cheerleader on the Front Bench, made the point that the Bill would not ban the resale of tickets, but simply restrict the price at which they could be resold, and that therefore the opinion polls were irrelevant. However, the same opinion poll also found that 56% agreed that the price of a ticket should be determined only by what they were willing to pay, which seems to fly in the face of the hon. Lady’s argument that everybody in the country is appalled by the current situation and that something needs to be done about it. Perhaps she has taken only a small or a biased sample of opinion; if she has a better mechanism for opinion polls than ICM, she should share it with the organisation. Furthermore, 61% agreed that the second-hand or secondary ticket market enables real fans to get hold of tickets that they would otherwise have missed out on. Contrary to the hon. Lady’s contention that most people think that the secondary market stops real fans getting their tickets, 61% of people think the exact opposite.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend has just mentioned the term “real fan”, while earlier we heard a number of references to “ordinary fan”, “average fan” and “biggest fan”. Is he aware of a definition for any of these terms?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point about what constitutes a “real fan” in these matters. If somebody is prepared to pay £2,000 or £5,000 for a ticket to a concert, I would argue that it provides the best example of a real fan. Nobody is going to pay that kind of money for a ticket to an event in which they are not really interested. It seems to me, then, that the free market and ticket touting help the real fans to find their way to the front of the queue rather than get clogged up by people who might be buying on a whim because the tickets are rather cheap.
The hon. Lady says that she is trying to help the organisers and others to sell the tickets for the benefit of real fans, but perhaps she should reflect a bit further. Some of the concert and sporting promoters should also reflect on the part of the ICM opinion poll showing that 71% of people agreed that too many tickets for major sporting and cultural events were allocated to corporate sponsors, hospitality packages and VIPs. On this particular matter, I tend to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hove, who would presumably say that these are their tickets and they are entitled to give them to whomever they want. I would not gainsay that in this particular case. It is a bit galling, however, for people to be lecturing everybody on how they want the real genuine fans to have the tickets at a price they can easily afford when they are some of the worst when it comes to real fans not getting their tickets, because of the “prawn sandwich brigade”.
Philip Davies
As I made clear at the start of my speech—I hope that I am considered to be someone who sticks to their word—I will speak for less time than the hon. Lady, and I intend to keep that promise.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend may like to know that those who have spoken in favour of the Bill spoke for 85 minutes; even if he continues until 2.30 pm, those who oppose the Bill will have spoken for only 51 minutes.