Secondary Ticketing Market

Jack Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) for securing such an important debate. She invited us to share the details of our first gig. Mine was when I was taken to hear Soul II Soul at the Notting Hill carnival when I was little, which was cool. In fact, on the day I was due to be born, my mum decided to see Nina Simone instead, which is also cool. Unfortunately, I have not lived up to that musical heritage, because I have been to see three out of seven members of S Club 7 and two fifths of 5ive. To be honest, that day inflation pricing was not the issue; it was whether we were going to get our money back at all—after we had seen them.

In all seriousness, buying tickets under false pretences and selling them on at hugely inflated prices means that fans face a choice: they either stump up or they miss out. It is therefore not hyperbole to say that ticket touts are ripping the heart out of live music.

Cracking down on ticket touting is important to music venues, too. Driving prices for gigs higher and higher means that genuine fans cannot access live music, and that has implications for small grassroots music venues as well as big arenas. I can proudly say that my constituency of Ipswich boasts a phenomenally impressive music scene, but if fans are consistently frozen out of live music and the arts more broadly and see them as something they can no longer afford or access, it is grassroots venues and entertainers that will suffer the most.

Although our most famous grassroots music venue, The Smokehouse, right in the heart of our town, has nurtured the next generation of local talent, it has been close to closure. During the covid-19 pandemic, the financial pressures became so overbearing that it had to be saved by £12,000 of crowdfunding from local residents and grants from the local Ipswich borough council and Arts Council England. Research from the Music Venue Trust earlier this year shows that two grassroots music venues close every week, leaving holes in the cultural fabric of the cities and towns they once brought so much joy to.

Our county of Suffolk is famous for being the home of Ed Sheeran—apologies—who is a phenomenal success. We are proud of the strides we have made in Ipswich over the past few years. I give a big shout-out to all those behind the Brighten the Corners music festival, who have an insatiable thirst for going bigger and better every single year. Yet with 2024 set to be the worst year on record for grassroots music venue closures, I cannot help but wonder whether Suffolk’s next Ed Sheeran will be denied their chance to shine.

It is high time to face up to these challenges. That is why I am proud, as a Labour and Co-operative MP, that our movement has been campaigning hard to ensure grassroots music venues have the opportunity to be owned and operated by the community. Community-owned assets can keep their profits local, reinvesting any money made into the project and its successes. Because such assets are rooted in their communities, they provide not just a physical space for gigs but other opportunities for communities too. Some community-owned music venues provide training and development for young people, teaching them about music technology, sound design and stage management, and setting them up for proper careers. We should actively support that groundbreaking model for the live music sector as a route to keep our beloved venues open.

At its heart, our work to crack down on ticket touts is about fairness and protecting consumers and fans. Scams and rip-offs are becoming increasingly common and normalised. That affects not just the live music industry but everything from football to car insurance. The odds are increasingly stacked against ordinary people and the grassroots industry in favour not just of big corporations, which are far more shielded from the problems I have outlined, but of ticket touts and scammers. We must fix that.

I welcome the new Labour Government’s commitment to make arts and culture more accessible to ordinary people, from tackling ticket touts to broadening the curriculum in schools and expanding access to the arts across the board. Finding a way to stop prolific ticket touts and their often illegal practices is a first step in the right direction, but it must be a springboard for change, spurring on further action to make arts and culture truly affordable and accessible for consumers.

I thank the many Members in the Chamber who have been campaigning on this issue for many years, and the fantastic organisations that have been mentioned. With the new Labour Government’s commitment to take action on this issue, we have a real opportunity to put fans back at the heart of live music.