£72,000 Taylor Swift tickets among 'despicable' touting as Sunderland MP calls for tougher action

Taylor Swift fans stung for thousands of pounds by ‘despicable’ resellers are among those being championed by a Sunderland MP as the Government takes a bashing on its ‘lack of action’ on ticket touting.

The House of Lords had previously pressed for a tougher stance on secondary ticketing platforms and attempted to make the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill stricter.

The Government disagreed with this and MPs voted to 273 to 163, majority 110 to overturn the Lords’ recommendation. A series of other disagreed amendments will also be returned to the House of Lords.

Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake said the “groundbreaking” legislation will confer more powers and duties on the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to regulate digital markets, as well as enforce consumer protection law.

However, Labour MPs cited a raft of examples, including three Taylor Swift tickets - with a face value of £170 each - being sold on one secondary-ticketing site for £72,000.

Washington and Sunderland West MP Sharon Hodgson has long campaigned for a crackdown on the sale of tickets for gigs, shows and sporting events at well over face value, and chairs an all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse.

She said “scammers, fraudsters and overseas websites” would benefit if the Commons did not approve a Lords amendment to clamp down on ticket touting.

“The Minister said in his opening remarks that all Opposition Members are doing is crowd-pleasing; I am sure I heard his words correctly,” she said.

“I think he will find that the crowd all have votes. This has been a fan-led campaign. Perhaps pleasing the crowd is not always a bad idea.

“We are here to represent the people, after all. For too long, this Government have allowed an online black market for ticket resale to thrive via websites such as Viagogo, StubHub, Gigsberg, Ticombo and Seatsnet.

“The public—the crowd, as the Minister called them—are sick to death of it.”

Mr Hollindrake thanked Mrs Hodgson for speaking ‘passionately’ on the topic during proceedings on the Bill and said MPs were ‘hugely grateful’ for her work highlighting malpractice in the resale market.

The £24,840 Adele ticket

Labour’s shadow culture minister Sir Chris Bryant criticised the Government for failing to do the bare minimum, and said Labour will go further to crack down on “despicable” resellers.

In the Commons on Tuesday, Sir Chris said: “These people are despicable parasites, preying on fans, and we need to go far, far further to address this issue.”

He added: “In 2016, one ticket for Adele at the O2 arena in London was listed on GetMeIn for £24,840 – that’s 290 times the face value of the ticket. Nobody in the Rhondda (his constituency) would be able to afford such a ticket.

“The amendment that comes from the Lords does the bare minimum, it really does.

“It would require facilities to only accept postings if they provide evidence of purchase from the primary market, it would limit resale of more tickets than a single customer can buy on the primary market and it would require clear information on the face value, and traders’ business name and address on the first page of a secondary ticketing facility.”

Asked why the Government would not support the Lords amendment on ticket touting, Mr Hollinrake said the measures are already covered under current legislation, adding: “This Government has gone further, certainly a lot further than previous regimes have done, in terms of strengthening terms and guidance.”

He added: “I agree, some of those examples are clearly shocking. The key is what measures are you going to put in place to address it?

“Now in Ireland, for example, they completely banned secondary sales, and yet the prices shown on the internet are an equivalent level to what she’s just described.

“So there is no perfect solution here for what’s been already tried.

“But we’re very happy to look at the evidence, look at what might be done, and do something that’s effective rather than something that is crowd-pleasing.”