Press Release
Grant Thornton comments on launch of government consultation on the resale of live events tickets
10 Jan 2025
Schellion Horn, Head of Economic Consulting at Grant Thornton, comments on the government consultation announced today on the resale of live events tickets and a separate government call for evidence on pricing practices, such as ‘dynamic pricing’, in the live events sector.
Schellion Horn, Head of Economic Consulting, Grant Thornton UK LLP, said:
“Price caps are more commonly associated with essential services such as energy or water, and so the introduction of a potential price-cap on a discretionary consumer product may appear unusual.
“Consumers have voiced concerns about the difficulty of purchasing tickets for popular events and then frustrations about seeing them advertised for resale at higher prices. The government’s proposals are clearly reacting to some of the concerns that have been voiced and may be welcomed by fans trying to secure tickets to see their favourite artists or events. But further detail is needed as to how a ticket re-sale price cap would be set and enforced and the specific details need careful consideration. There's a risk that the introduction of a cap could push the re-sale of tickets away from authorised reseller sites to other more ‘informal’ avenues that will be difficult to bring within the price cap regime, such as social media. This would result in customers losing the current protection offered from guaranteed re-seller websites and could lead to more fraudulent sales.
“A balance is therefore needed between managing the sometimes-significant increase in cost of re-sale tickets but also maintaining quality in the market, by ensuring that customers have the right protections available to them and the associated risks of a potential increase in sales from unauthorised sites is managed.
“A call for evidence on dynamic pricing has also been called by the government today. While dynamic pricing is a method regularly used by hotels and airlines, a lack of transparency that it was in place for Oasis ticket sales recently led to large-scale criticism of the process.
“Since then, we have already seen primary sellers reacting to this scrutiny by introducing more clearly outlined 'price bands' for tickets and other initiatives, rather than relying on a dynamic pricing model.”
