Ticket Price Regulation: Live Events

Debate between Rupa Huq and Ian Murray

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Ian Murray)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) for a very dramatic speech. She went through places where she has seen concerts; I do not know if she, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Withington (Jeff Smith), is hankering for her youth, and wishing she could go back there, but it was a tremendous speech, and I think we would agree with every word she said.

My hon. Friend mentioned Bon Jovi. I would have been at that concert this evening as they took the stage, had I not been here answering her debate. It had particular relevance for me, because I am not new to this industry; I had my own business when I left university, and the very first thing that I organised was a Scotland-wide tour for a tribute band. Hon. Members will never guess which artist they were a tribute to; they were called Non Jovi. Those tickets were dynamically priced—the price would only ever go down, because nobody ever came to see them. Never mind; that is my hankering after the good old days.

The UK live events sector is, as my hon. Friend said, a jewel in our national crown. From world-class sporting matches to unforgettable concerts—tonight we have heard about many that have not been forgotten—and plays, those events enrich our lives, strengthen community bonds and inspire future generations. Crucially, they provide us with stories that we can tell for years and years. They greatly benefit our economy, generating billions annually, and support a dynamic creative and sporting ecosystem. This Government understand that, and we have put the creative industries front and centre of our modern industrial strategy; we are committing to boosting investment in the sector from £17 billion to £31 billion by 2035.

For too long, however, as highlighted by Lord Brennan of Canton’s report following the independent fan-led music review, the joy of attending live events has been marred by unfair practices in the ticketing market, most notably the systematic activities of ticket touts, which we heard about from my hon. Friend. They crowd out fans from the primary market and resell at extortionate prices. Ticket touts—this is a remarkable figure—take £400,000 a day from fans’ pockets; that is nearly £150 million a year. That is money that should be going into the industry.

The Government are committed to tackling industrial-scale touting once and for all, improving transparency around pricing practices, and putting money in fans’ pockets. As my hon. Friend has demonstrated, far too often, fans are crowded out of the primary market by touts, who are only interested in making a quick and exorbitant profit at fans’ expense. The Government have been clear: this has to stop. My hon. Friend is correct: as I said in the Daily Record, the touts’ time is up.

We want to improve transparency, consumer protection and fans’ access to live events. We also want to make sure that they have a safe and secure means of selling, reselling or transferring their tickets, and to ensure that money flows back into the live events sector and fans’ pockets. That is why we committed in our manifesto and our recently published plan for music to introducing new consumer protections for live event ticket resale, and it is why my Department, alongside the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, undertook a consultation last year on the best ways of tackling this, as well as issuing a call for evidence on pricing practices across the wider sector.

We received over 500 responses from right across the live events sector. There were some clear themes for us to address, and those themes have been highlighted this evening. First, genuine fans should be able to recoup the costs of their ticket when no longer able to attend. Enforcement needs to be effective if our measures are to have impact. Secondary platforms need to play their part in ensuring that new rules are implemented and complied with, and that primary and secondary platforms are part of the same ticketing ecosystem. The former could do more to protect their sales and, where appropriate, share information more seamlessly with resale platforms.

As a result, we are taking action. Last November, we announced a robust package of measures to tackle exploitative touting, including a resale price cap, a separate service fee cap, limits on the number of tickets that can be resold, and obligations on platforms, all reinforced by the Competition and Markets Authority’s new powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

In the King’s Speech briefing earlier this year, we announced that the Government will publish a draft ticket tout ban Bill in this Session for pre-legislative scrutiny by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, of which my hon. Friend is a member. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and the Committee through that process. Following pre-legislative scrutiny, the Government will introduce the Bill when parliamentary time allows and, as the Secretary of State said in Parliament last week—[Interruption.] We are coming to it. As the Secretary of State said last week, the Prime Minister is particularly passionate about this issue, and we will give the legislation the priority that it deserves and needs. We all want to see this on the statute book as soon as possible.

[Dr Huq]

I am sorry that the Minister missed Bon Jovi because of me. I wonder whether there is any indication of when this will happen, because with all the things that a draft Bill brings—all the hoops of more consultation—it will take until 2028 now. I just feel that every day people are being ripped off. We have just missed another summer festival season. Can the Minister give us a time?

[Ian Murray]

As I replied to my hon. Friend at the Select Committee meeting I attended last week, there were 39 Bills in the first Session of this new Government—39 very important Bills—that took us nearly two years to get through. In this Session, through the King’s Speech, we have of course introduced a number of Bills, and this one is a draft Bill. I can only reassure my hon. Friend and the House that we want to get this done as quickly as possible. That means we need to find the parliamentary time, once the draft Bill has been prepared and is ready, which should be imminently—not too many sleeps left; it depends on how many days we want to sleep for. We will then have a draft Bill that we can take forward, but there is a commitment from my Department and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade to getting this done as quickly as possible.

My hon. Friend had her private Member’s Bill, which she is waving around, on this topic in the last parliamentary Session. I share her concern for fans. It is worth noting that her Bill was drafted before the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which imposes new requirements around price transparency, came into effect in April last year.

Our legislation will be focused on ending the scourge of touting, thereby improving access to live events. Tackling touting, and ensuring that fans are at the heart of live events, cannot be done by Government alone, of course; industry needs to play its part. It is industry-led action, innovation and best practice, alongside the Government’s new measures, that will truly transform the fan experience. The Government recognise that many ticketing platforms, event organisers and venues have devoted a lot of time, energy and resources to this issue in recent years. We know that significant money has been spent combating ticket fraud, touts and bot use, as well as educating fans on what to look out for when they are buying tickets online, all to ensure that buying tickets is as safe and seamless for fans as possible.

Nevertheless, the strength of feeling from respondents to our consultation and the call for evidence was clear. In fact, they share our strength of feeling about the touting issue. Industry must build on existing guidance to do more to tackle exploitative practices. This is why we strongly welcome the commitment by the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers—STAR for short—to convene the sector. It will establish new best practice that ensures that pricing information is clear and up front, and that fans are empowered to make informed purchasing decisions, free from undue pressure. This work is already under way; I attended the inaugural meeting in March this year. The work is organised under four headings, to address some of the key issues in the ticketing sector. First, it will look at pricing transparency. Secondly, the industry will look at how the primary market can continue to be healthy. Thirdly, another workstream will look at accessibility issues. Finally, the industry will look at consumer education.

Let us have a look at dynamic pricing. We know this is a subject that many people are concerned about. Businesses should feel free to use whatever pricing strategy meets their needs, but they must comply with the law. Where it appears that this is not happening, the CMA has the powers to enforce that and act upon it, and when businesses fall short of what is expected of them under the law, the CMA has powerful enforcement tools to ensure that businesses can be penalised and brought into line.

Drip pricing is another one that my hon. Friend mentioned. It is not right when fans are shown a price for a product, only to find that it has increased by mandatory charges that are added as the transaction proceeds, particularly if they have been waiting all day on a screen to get to the front of the queue to buy tickets. I do not know if my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) has sat in his parliamentary office doing that at any point, but it is a real problem. In June this year, the Competition and Markets Authority fined StubHub International close to £900,000 and ordered it to issue refunds exceeding £590,000 to 50,000 fans for using this illegal practice. The CMA is also investigating Viagogo for similar practices.

Lastly, on a related point, I continue to encourage the industry to adopt the voluntary £1 ticket levy for live events to support our grassroots music and grassroots music venues. The industry is doing the levy, but is it doing enough? Is a big question mark, and we just keep encouraging it to do as much as it possibly can.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on such an important issue, which affects the dedicated fans who sustain our live events sector. I would like to reassure the House that this Government are tackling industrial-scale ticket touting with urgency and will bring forth the legislation to ensure that fans are not priced out of major cultural and sporting events. That is a priority for this Government, and we will do that. I look forward to returning to this House with the draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny, and I welcome further engagement with my hon. Friend, and many other hon. Friends who have a deep interest in this issue, to help tackle ticket touting once and for all.

Question put and agreed to.