Ticket fraud: A review of the UK’s legislative developments to regulate the secondary ticket market

This article was updated on 27th July 2018

This section considers the on-going developments in England & Wales to tackle ticket fraud and the lack of transparency in the “secondary ticket market” (i.e. when tickets are resold on “secondary” ticket platforms). Please note that the section focuses on the obligations placed on secondary ticket platforms and sellers, as opposed to the position and legal remedies of rights holders.1 Specifically, the article examines:

• Why legislation has been necessary;

• The Competition & Markets Authority’s (CMA) letter to secondary ticketing businesses;

• The Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA 2015) – an overview of key provisions relating to the advertisement of tickets, and the perceived missed opportunities;

• The “Waterson Report”2 – the conclusions of Professor Michael Waterson’s independent review of the CRA 2015;

• The Digital Economy Act 2017 (DEA 2017), and how it addresses ticket harvesting software and botnets (explained below); and

• The effectiveness of the current regulatory framework – does the legislation and the Waterson recommendations go far enough to tackle the problems associated with ticket touting?

This section builds on a previous piece that the author wrote for LawInSport in 2014, available here.3