Earlier this year, the UK Government announced plans for a new cap to be introduced on the price of resold tickets for concerts, live sport and other events to help stamp out ticket touting. A price cap of up to 10% above face value formed part of Labour’s 2024 election manifesto pledges.
The consumer watchdog had previously published recommendations on improving protection for event attendees in 2021, but the government initially rejected these some 19 months later in May 2023.
But now, the CMA is also backing plans for a price cap, writing: “We recognise that, although the proposals made in our 2021 report reduce the number of tickets being resold at inflated prices, they would not directly limit resale prices, and may therefore not fully deliver on the government’s objectives, including to protect consumers from ‘excessive resale pricing’. By contrast, a resale price cap would have a direct effect on resale prices, provided that a sufficient degree of compliance was secured through a well-designed and adequately resourced enforcement framework.”
The CMA also said it would expect a resale price cap to apply to both resellers and secondary ticketing platforms. “Making platforms liable for ensuring tickets listed on their sites are compliant with any price cap would significantly simplify enforcement and improve overall compliance,” the CMA added.
It should also be easily ascertainable, even to consumers, that a price cap has been exceeded for the practice to be successfully implemented, said the CMA.
Additionally, the watchdog proposed that the ‘original price’ of a ticket would include compulsory fees charged by a primary seller. A price cap would also mean that price information from primary sellers will need to be easily accessible and verifiable.
The CMA added that the government may wish to consider “including powers to regulate buyer fees” so that resale sites will not be able to charge significantly higher ticket fees to compensate for lost profits caused by a price cap. Strong action would need to be taken for those that break the rules, including with resellers that utilise social media to sell tickets at inflated prices.
In 2019, the CMA estimated that the value of tickets sold through secondary ticketing platforms to be around £350m (€419m/$453m) – with roughly 1.9 million tickets sold that year.