Ticketing Consultation and Call for Evidence: Government Response

The UK has a world-leading live events sector. Our major sporting and cultural events not only are key to our social fabric, but support economic growth right across the country. For too long, however, access to live events has been undermined by ticket touts who exploit fans and extract value unfairly from the live events sector. Seeing your favourite artist or performer should not be a rip-off, and the hard-earned cash that fans pay to attend events should flow back into supporting growth and jobs in the sector, not line the pockets of touts. At the same time, we have seen that new practices across the ticketing market, such as dynamic pricing, are presenting further challenges for fans when buying tickets for the events they love.

This Government are committed to putting fans first, ensuring that they are protected from harmful practices on the ticket resale market. Today, we are setting out our plans to deliver for fans and the live events industry, by publishing the Government responses to the consultation on the resale of live events tickets and a call for evidence on pricing practices in the live events sector, which we ran earlier this year. This is another milestone in delivering on our commitment to grow our world-leading creative industries, as part of the Government’s new industrial strategy, boosting investment in the sector from £17 billion to £31 billion by 2035.

After reviewing the evidence submitted through the consultation process, the Government are announcing that we will introduce the following measures:

A resale price cap which prohibits someone from reselling a ticket for more than the original ticket cost, inclusive of unavoidable fees incurred during the original purchase—saving fans an estimated £37 for each ticket bought on the resale market.

A separate cap on resale service fees, to ensure the price cap cannot be undermined by inflated fees, while providing a sustainable margin for resale platforms.

Resale volume limits which make it unlawful for someone to resell more tickets for an event than they were entitled to purchase.

Strict legal obligations on platforms to ensure compliance with the price cap, applied broadly to all online platforms facilitating resale of live events tickets.

There was broad support among fans, businesses and consumer groups for these measures, which make good on our manifesto commitment to put fans back at the heart of live events and end the scourge of industrial-scale touting. The Government will legislate to implement these measures when parliamentary time allows.

We recognise that robust enforcement is vital, so we will enable enforcement of the new measures via the consumer enforcement regime established by part 3 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which recently came into effect. This regime provides for tough financial penalties of up to 10% of global turnover, and expedited powers for the Competition and Markets Authority to tackle certain consumer law breaches directly.