Ticket Touting: Musical Events

Debate between Pete Wishart and Sharon Hodgson

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and she is absolutely and utterly right. Last week, I listened to the presentation by the Competition and Markets Authority at the meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, which was hosted by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). These measures have been far too slow in coming; the Government need to get a move on with them. I will come back to that point later, because what the Government are doing is important, but there is lethargy at the heart of their response.

I was trying to describe how all this works. We have Live Nation putting on the shows and Ticketmaster selling the tickets at the venues, which are all hoovered up by the touts. The tickets then go on sale on the secondary sites owned by Ticketmaster. Google is then incentivised to promote those secondary sites by placing them at the top of their searches. So what happens in this perfect model is that the touts get their hit on the secondary sites and Google gets a share, but critically Ticketmaster and Live Nation secure their secondary cut from their secondary sites.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. We have had numerous debates on this issue over the years, but this one is extremely timely, with the “bot law” coming in just last week, and following the meeting that we had with the CMA. He mentioned Google. Does he agree that most people are driven to these sites by Google? If he does, does he also agree that Google has a role to play—by not giving these sites top billing and by ensuring that consumers realise that these markets are secondary markets and not primary ones?

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely, and what Google actually does is breach its own certification rules, which suggest that it must ensure that such sites are designated as secondary sites. Google has a big role to play in this, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to mention it.

This business model is almost elegant in its exploitative design. Last year, Live Nation made over £1 billion just from its secondary sites. There is also good anecdotal evidence, which I will try to relay under parliamentary privilege, suggesting that the players at the very top of the music business tree—at management level and at promoter level—have a working relationship with some of the biggest touts in the world, to ensure that the wheels and the cogs of this huge, exploitative machine are properly oiled and working at maximum efficiency.

Everywhere throughout this broken infrastructure, relationships and models of exploitation such as those I have mentioned are the norm. StubHub is another one of the “big four” secondary sites. It is owned by eBay, which purchased it in 2007. StubHub now has a global partnership with AEG, which just so happens to operate the O2 and Wembley Arena. That means that, by default, the parasite-infested StubHub is the official resale partner of the O2 and Wembley Arena, which are two of the most prestigious venues in the United Kingdom.

However, the daddy of them all is the truly appalling and exploitative Viagogo. I do not know what arrangement Viagogo has with Google, but if you were to look online for your Stormzy ticket, Sir Christopher, you would be directed to Viagogo to try and purchase it.

Our ticketing infrastructure, therefore, is a broken monolith of misery, where tech giants are in cahoots with touts, who are in cahoots with the promoters and managers. But I will spend just a couple of minutes on Viagogo. How a company that exists exclusively to exploit people and to rip them off is allowed to continue operating is simply beyond me. If anybody is watching this debate at home, I say to them, “Do not buy tickets from Viagogo! Go nowhere near them! You will be ripped off totally! Do not touch them!”

At the all-party group meeting last week, I listened to some of the unfortunate victims of Viagogo. Viagogo is so exploitative that a self-help group has emerged among its customers—that group has thousands and thousands of members, who are ordinary, honest people just trying to secure a ticket for a friend or a grandchild, or as a rare treat for themselves. They had no reason to believe that the simple fact of trying to buy a ticket would expose them to such shark-infested waters and such danger. Why would they? Here was “nice Mr Google” directing them to these sites, so that they could find tickets. But that is where the horror starts, as the victims of Viagogo are exposed to all sorts of hard sells, tricks and exploitative practices.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I will give way one last time to the hon. Lady.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am intervening because I want the hon. Gentleman to join me in congratulating Claire Turnham for her amazing work. She set up Victims of Viagogo, originally because she was a victim herself and wanted to try to get her money back. After that long fight, however, she put out the information she had gathered, in order to help others. She has now helped thousands of people to receive hundreds of thousands of pounds in refunds. So will he join me in welcoming Claire’s work?

[Pete Wishart]

I have no hesitation in doing so, and I also commend the hon. Lady herself for her diligent work over the years in chairing the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse. In fact, it is in my speech to congratulate Claire Turnham, whom I met last week and who has done a fantastic job. She has managed to reclaim thousands and thousands of pounds for the Victims of Viagogo, but why should she have to do that? It is not the job of individuals—drummers, guitarists and singers—to protect the public; it is the Minister’s job. That is your job, Minister. It should be you who is protecting people—not individuals such as Claire Turnham, who are having to do that difficult job.

I heard about the emotional impact of being ripped off and realised how stressful and difficult it is for people to try to reclaim the money they have been swindled out of. I heard that health, relationships and work have all seriously suffered. As a musician, I heard about people being put off attending gigs for the rest of their lives because of the experience they have suffered from these parasites and companies that exist solely to rip people off.

Leaving the EU: Tourism and the Creative Industries

Debate between Pete Wishart and Sharon Hodgson

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning that point, and I will come on to discuss it, because I chair the all-party parliamentary group on intellectual property and I have a few choice words to say about where we are going with all this.

I want to say first, however, because it is important, that we are in the top three of all recognised sectors worldwide when it comes to the creative economy and creative industries. The hon. Lady is right that that has been achieved because we have a huge reservoir of talent and ability in these islands. However, we are not unique in that respect; the UK is not exceptional in having large swathes of talent. Lots of other nations have that, too, but we have harnessed that creativity, to ensure that it is supported, developed and allowed to thrive. We have created the conditions that have allowed creative endeavour to succeed.

As the hon. Lady suggested, one of those conditions is the environment that we have created. We have intellectual property arrangements, ensuring that copyright is protected and that our artists are able to secure a return for their endeavour, their ingenuity and their ability. We have created an effective business and support environment that has allowed our artists to develop and flourish. We have innovated, we have developed international relationships, we have collaborated and we have recognised and valued the international dimension of creativity. Brexit? It could make you cry, with the damage that it will do to all that.

The creative sector is very concerned about the impact of Brexit on our creative economy. The Creative Industries Federation has found that 96%—I repeat, 96%—of its members believe that Brexit is a fundamentally bad thing that will critically impact on the sector.

I listened to the Prime Minister’s Mansion House speech. There were lots and lots of things that I deplored in what she said, but the thing that sickened me most was the casual way she dismissed the digital single market, as if it was some sort of Brussels wheeze that got in the way of our national liberation. The digital single market is all about harmonising arrangements across the European Union. As the largest creator of content in the whole of the European Union, we designed the digital single market for goodness’ sake, and now we are joyfully leaving it. We will now be a third party when it comes to European arrangements, which is a profoundly bad position to be in, and we will not be looked at favourably by a European Union that we have so recently rejected.

Already, European nations are rubbing their hands and carving up all the institutions that they will acquire. The French are at it; the Germans are at it; and the eastern Europeans are practically gleeful about the opportunities that their content markets will now have, because we are leaving the European Union.

However, the biggest issue and the biggest threat that this ridiculous, chaotic Brexit will pose for our creative industries is the ending of freedom of movement. The creative industries probably need freedom of movement more than any other sector within our economy; the Department for Exiting the European Union itself found that, when it looked at all this sort of thing. For investment, harmonisation and collaboration in developing markets, we require the type of arrangements that exist within the EU, and to casually walk away as if the digital single market did not matter a fig is something that we should be appallingly ashamed at.

I believe there is only one thing we can do. We will never get back to the optimal arrangements of the European Union, of the digital single market, of harmonising across Europe and creating the conditions in which our creative industries can develop, thrive and grow markets. But what we have to do, Minister, is to stay as closely aligned as possible to the European Union. Even though we are now a third party, and it is likely that we will be rejected and treated poorly, the Minister must ensure that whatever the EU does in the digital single market is replicated within the United Kingdom, because if he does not, we will be in some serious trouble.

The Minister must also ensure that the creative industries and intellectual property are at the heart of any bilateral trade arrangement that is put in place. As I said, I chair the all-party parliamentary group on intellectual property and I have seen the report from the Alliance for Intellectual Property that warns, once again, of a “cliff-edge” Brexit and the impact that it would have on IP rights, reciprocity and all the things to do with our audio-visual sector, with portability and all the good things that we have been able to secure. We will lose all that. It is not going to come back, but we have to make sure that we are properly aligned.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I want to put a question to the hon. Gentleman, not on IP but in his capacity as a well-known musician. Here, I am not talking about Runrig or Big Country, but—obviously—MP4. As a musician, he will probably know that only 2% of the music industry workforce has said that it feels Brexit will have a positive impact on their chances of work; 50% feared that it would have a negative impact. Does he agree that the Government should listen to their concerns and consider seeking a live music touring passport, which is one of several measures being discussed by the industry?

[Pete Wishart]

What we are now in the business of doing is finding solutions to mitigate the damage. The Minister will have to try and find ways to mitigate the loss of the optimal arrangements that we have in place now as members of the European Union. The touring passport is an example of how we can mitigate it. We are not going to get back to the ideal conditions. They have gone; for some reason, this Government are determined to pull us out of what is working for us, and is fundamentally and profoundly good for this sector. So arrangements will have to be put in place.

The hon. Lady will have seen the reports from UK Music, the Musicians’ Union and the Performers’ Alliance, which are all telling us that we are now in the position of trying to redress some of the damage.