Proposed Crown Jewels restrictions not good for fans
The Government wants to protect the Crown Jewels. No, not just the ones safely locked away in the Tower of London, but “events of national importance”, such as the FA Cup, Wimbledon and the Six Nations rugby. After having reviewed the issue four times in the past three years, the Culture Minister last week issued yet another consultation on these Crown Jewel events and how fans get to see them, or not see them as the case may be.
If an event achieves ‘Crown Jewel’ status, the secondary market will be “invited to exercise self-regulation and restraint in respect of ticket resale”. And it’s not just sport – “major international cultural occasions”, to quote Gerry Sutcliffe, Minister for Sport – might also fall within its ambit.
Repeatedly MPs have concluded that the secondary ticket market benefits fans and increases opportunities for people from all walks of life to attend such events. Fans have benefitted greatly - as has been acknowledged by the Government - from the rise of an organised secondary market with rational pricing and peace of mind. So it’s odd that the Government now wants to restrict this new “green shoot” of business in the UK?
What would the Government prefer – a return to the bad old days of touts lurking outside venues looking to make a quick buck with no consumer protection?
Seatwave has provided access for those who have never previously had the opportunity to attend these events. A customer recently told me he had entered the ECB ballot for ten years in an attempt to see the Ashes and never got a ticket. Now, thanks to the secondary market, if he wants to go, he just goes. Rugby fans are also choosing Seatwave as a place to buy and sell tickets with three times more people buying Six Nations tickets from the site as at the same time last year.
There is an interesting trade-off in all this that the Government, desperate to show that it is acting in the interests of its citizens, is keeping very quiet. Ministers need to retain the support of sporting bodies in the lead-up to the 2012 Olympics, and so are willing to trade the benefit of fans to curry favour with the big-wigs.
For their part, the sporting bodies want the Government to reduce competition so that they can sell more tickets to corporate fat cats at higher prices. In 2008 the RFU earned over £64 million from sponsorship, ticketing and hospitality – certainly the Government has better things to do in the credit crunch than protect this revenue stream. Unsurprisingly, such restrictions would leave fewer tickets available for the average fan.
And to take a sporting example, the restrictions against the resale of football tickets in the UK just don’t work. If you want a ticket for a match, you can usually find one at any of the less reputable sites, and a quick search of Google shows tickets being offered for five or six times their face value. But the sellers register their sites offshore, meaning no comeback for fans, no revenue for the Chancellor and subsequently no fan segregation at the grounds, which completely defeats the legislation’s objective.
The answer is a fair and open market where fans can see the breadth of what’s available and where ticket prices are transparent. How much more taxpayer money will be wasted before the Government puts this issue to bed and stops allowing sporting bodies and other event promoters to put their own interests first?
If anything, we believe that the interests of fans would be best served by a government review of the proposed Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger, which, if approved would allow one giant music powerhouse to completely control supply and prices, creating a stranglehold on the wallets of fans. It seems odd that the Government will permit the creation of a market-dominating force in this industry, yet wants to prevent fans from being able to resell tickets they have rightfully purchased.
We will continue to advocate a system where fans have the opportunity to attend the events they want, and urge the Government to consider an approach rooted in a fair market.
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