its biggest month ever in February, while secondary was once again one of the highlights of Live Nation’s Q2 results, with growth of over 20% for the ninth consecutive quarter to over $300million (€271m). StubHub, meanwhile – the largest secondary ticketer in North America – is eBay’s fastest-growing business, generating its parent company $725m (€654m) in revenue in 2015 amid flat growth for eBay’s classic internet auction platform. According to eBay-watching blog TameBay, StubHub was “one of the high points of an otherwise largely unimpressive set of Q4 2015 and year-end 2015 results for eBay Inc.”, posting a 33% increase in Q4 revenue to $232m (€209m). More recently, StubHub revenues increased by 40% to $225m (€203m) in Q2 2016, vastly outperforming eBay Inc. as a whole. While the secondary boom is, of course, good news for the companies involved, increased turnover has spawned increased scrutiny, and sites such as Seatwave, StubHub and Viagogo (which is pre-eminent outside North America) are increasingly finding themselves the target of criticism from fans, promoters and industry associations, who accuse the companies involved of preventing ‘real fans’ from being able to see their favourite artists. While the debate isn’t always exactly level-headed and objective – misleading tabloid-style headlines such as ‘Finding it hard to get a ticket for Adele? There’s one on sale for £24,000’ ( The Guardian, 27 February 2016) frequently fail to differentiate between speculative listings and what customers are actually paying – the authorities are nevertheless making life more difficult than ever before for resellers, with the past 12 months seeing a raft of new regulations designed to clampdown on the shadier aspects of touting, or even resale for profit altogether.
marketplaces in Belgium, Britain, the US, Switzerland and Spain have all come under increased pressure from governments, judiciaries and industry associations since last year’s report. Madrid-headquartered Ticketbis, the market leader in Spain, southern Europe and Latin America, has been embroiled in a legal dispute with Doctor Music, which it is suing for libel following what it calls a “smear campaign” in which the Spanish promoter lodged official complaints against a number of secondary ticketing sites. In March, Doctor Music complained to Spanish regulatory authorities that the “flood of resale tickets” for its 2016 Bruce Springsteen and Adele gigs in Spain had “outraged fans, artists and music promoters” and called Ticketbis, along with Seatwave, Tengoentradas. com, Viagogo, Entradas 365, TicketNetwork, Ticket Liquidator and Worldticketshop “harmful to the world of music.” At press time, the case had gone quiet, but eBay's susequent acquisition of Ticketbis may well have drawn a line under legal proceedings. In the US, two pieces of proposed regulatory legislation – the Boss Act (Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing) and Bots (Better Online Ticket Sales) Act – are currently making their way through the machinery of
government. If passed, the former would among other things, require that secondary outlets verify that a reseller is in possession of a ticket, or has entered into a binding contract to purchase a ticket, before offering it for sale, while the latter would ban the use of ticket-buying software or bots, on a federal level. “The ticket industry is full of opaque practices that game the consumer, the casual fan,” said the bills’ architect, New Jersey representative Bill Pascrell, after they received a positive reception from the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee. “That’s why the Boss Act is necessary. It would bring transparency and a set of parameters to a multibillion-dollar industry running amok.” Bot-using touts have also found themselves a powerful enemy in the form of New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman, who in April collectively fined online brokers TicketToad, A2Z, Just in Time, Flying Falco Entertainment and All Events Utah a total of $2.7m (€2.4m) for using the software to bulk-buy tickets in violation of New York law. In Belgium, meanwhile, three secondary outlets – Topticketshop, Rang1Tickets.nl and Tickets België – have found themselves blocked by Belgian ISPs by the order of a judge after touts allegedly used the sites to
UNWANTED ATTENTION Although only a handful of countries, such as Italy and Poland, have criminalised ticket resale – and their numbers haven’t increased since the publication of ITY 2015 – secondary
New York attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, goes on the offensive against unscrupulous ticketing operators
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