Westminster’s Professor Guy Osborn has co-led ground-breaking research that is helping to strengthen UK and EU policy against secondary ticketing practices that price out consumers from events.
The UK’s secondary ticketing market had an estimated £1bn annual worth in 2019. The very premise of this industry centres on mass-buying tickets to sporting and cultural events, only to sell them on to consumers at inflated prices. It excludes consumers who cannot afford them and exploits those who can – some of whom will be unable to use these tickets, as secondary ticketing often breaches tickets’ purchase terms.
Professor Guy Osborn (University of Westminster) and Professor Mark James (Manchester Metropolitan University) led the first detailed investigation into the legal situation around the unauthorised resale of tickets to sporting and entertainment events. Their work analysed existing and proposed ticketing laws from around the world and their inability to cope with this rapidly evolving commercial context.
Their work has helped shape UK and EU policy, including tackling the problem of mass-ticket-buying ‘bots’ in the EU. It has also advised on the standardisation of legally compliant resale terms and conditions (T&C) for UK ticketing vendors by creating guidance on applying the industry’s model T&C.
Influencing UK policy and enforcement of consumer law
Analysing existing and proposed ticketing laws, Professor Osborn and Professor James developed several key recommendations, based on their research. These recommendations include:
- Establishing a legally consistent definition of an ‘event ticket’
- Establishing a legally robust method of determining the legality of T&Cs seeking to prohibit or restrict purchasers’ ability to resell tickets
- Drawing clearer distinctions between a ticket tout and other types of resellers, eg someone innocently reselling tickets at face value
- Pursuing a more effective campaign of education concerning what purchasers can and cannot legally do with event tickets.
In April 2018, they were invited by Sharon Hodgson MP, the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse, to make a presentation at the House of Commons, attended by around 100 parliamentarians and industry stakeholders. Their presentation once again highlighted the need for more effective definitions of ‘trader’ and ‘ticket’, and for “clarity of the legality of the restrictive terms and conditions that are routinely included in ticket contracts”. Hodgson often reviews the research when making legislative decisions on this issue, she says.
PULL QUOTE: “The research of Professor Osborn and Professor James has allowed cross-party legislators, in the Commons and Lords, to consider the significance of what tickets are in a legal context and how we can legislate around that to prevent secondary ticket touting on an industrial scale.” - Sharon Hodgson MP, the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse
Taking on viagogo
Osborn and James contributed to influential research commissioned by campaign group FanFair Alliance (FFA), which its campaign manager, Adam Webb, explains, “was widely quoted in the 2019 DCMS Select Committee report on Live Music and received widespread national media coverage”.
The Select Committee used this FFA report to highlight how secondary ticketing website viagogo misrepresents itself as an “official – not resale – ticketing site”, referring to its examples of real consumer victims of the site.
In response, the Government singled out viagogo as having “yet to prove itself a trustworthy operator”, as it flouted consumer law and resisted court orders and compliance. “It is imperative that the CMA [Competition and Markets Authority] acts promptly and decisively to bring viagogo into line with consumer law,” the Government response continued, adding: “Until it does so, we advise the public not to buy or sell tickets via viagogo.”
In July 2019, the CMA filed contempt proceedings against viagogo, after it ignored a court order, and viagogo was forced to overhaul its UK website to comply with consumer protection law.
“The viagogo website UK customers now visit is worlds apart from the one they faced before the CMA took action,” the CMA stated in September 2019, withdrawing its legal action in response to the changes made by viagogo. “Key information needed to make informed decisions before buying a ticket is now much clearer.”
Changing EU policy to protect consumers from ‘bots’
In 2018, Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT) – a group lobbying to outlaw above-face-value ticket resales – approached Professor Osborn and Professor James for expert guidance on its submission to the EU, concerning its proposed consumer protection law modernisation.
As the Director and the Campaign Lead of FEAT confirm, the researchers’ “involvement included offering advice on FEAT’s goals, pointing us towards various UK regulations and providing a UK perspective, providing a detailed analysis of the suggested amendments to the new regulation, as well as suggesting additional amendments, and helping re-word the amendment on the banning of bots”.
On the researchers’ recommendation, FEAT’s submission centred on a call for mass ticket purchasing by bots to be criminalised and the EU did just that in a ground-breaking November 2019 directive.
Creating model T&Cs to protect ticket retailers and consumers
Professor Osborn and Professor James provided input to new Model T&Cs Prohibiting Resale or Transfer of Tickets for STAR (the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers). As the UK’s self-regulatory body for the entertainment ticketing industry, STAR “has been at the forefront of cross-industry initiatives to improve consumer confidence, make ticket buying safer and combat ticket fraud”, explains CEO Jonathan Brown.
Writing in 2019, Brown described how the researchers’ suggestions focused on amendments to make the Model T&C easier for STAR’s 250+ UK members to navigate. There is “no doubt”, he adds, that their “thoughts and contributions were significant to the final drafting”.
The final version of the STAR Model T&Cs, published in June 2019, includes user guidance in a section titled: “Things to Consider Before Adding Resale Restrictions”. Drawing upon James and Osborn’s recommendations, Brown says, this section contains six consideration points that “will not only help event organisers to decide which resale terms should apply and how they are enforced, it will also help to reduce the risk of the CMA prioritising enforcement action against them”.
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