Imagine a world where profiting from the reselling of tickets was illegal. I’m sure we have all had the extra ticket or had a sudden family emergency that meant we couldn’t attend a gig or festival, and sold it on for a few quid profit.
Well Australia may be the first country to implement such a ban because the government in the state of New South Wales is proposing new consumer rights laws that would effectively make it illegal to resell tickets for profit.
These new anti-touting laws are not to stop people from re-selling their tickets, but to prevent them making profit. This rule wouldn’t refuse the administration fees added, but would cap it at ten percent of the ticket price. We have previously reported about bot bans to prevent people using software to buy lots of tickets in bulk, and it seems Australia are including this as part of their proposals. Yasir Naqvi, the state’s Attorney General, told reporters: ‘Stronger rules for buying and selling tickets will help give fans a fair shot at getting music, sports or theatre tickets. Our proposed changes will ban bots and excessive mark ups, prevent fraud, and provide more information in the ticket industry. We are putting fans first by making the industry more transparent and tickets more affordable.’
Will this be the start of something that will be implemented across the globe to tackle touts and exorbitant prices for tickets to gigs and sporting events. We have previously reported about celebrities standing up to show their disgrace at how much their fans were being charged for tickets on third party sites. Ed Sheeran in particular shouted that something more needs to be done. Maybe New South Wales will be considered as the captain of a new round the world journey to battle against ticket touts…!
