Chief Reporter Mark McGivern believes the latest capitulation by the CMA offers the perfect justification for a UK legal ban on touting.
The Daily Record’s chief reporter Mark McGivern has written extensively about ticket touts – and the platforms that make millions from their dodgy profiteering. He believes the latest capitulation by the CMA offers the perfect justification for a UK legal ban on touting.
So, the UK’s consumer watchdog says it’s finally getting tough on ticket touts. Give me a break.
A £900,000 fine for “drip pricing” on the notorious StubHub UK site, as trumpeted by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) this week, is no more than a pittance.
It’s a drop in the ocean weighed against the tens of millions of pounds they’ve made on the back of handling rip-off sales for ticket touts- many of whom are crooks.
As a journalist who’s written umpteen articles on the wild profiteering of companies like StubHub and Viagogo over the years, via our Stub Out The Touts campaign, I can testify to the toothlessness of the (CMA).
It’s a frustration that’s shared by many in the music business and FanFair Alliance, a true consumer champion.
Action trumpeted by the CMA this week includes a refund of a tenner for around 51,000 customers who were given sneaky surcharges at the end of their buying process.
This will cost StubHub around £500,000 – a gentle slap on the wrist.
The miniscule level of penalty means the only winners in the action are StubHub, who will be rubbing their hands at getting away with it – again.
And this, again, is another win for StubHub – getting off even lighter by admitting to something for which they could have little defence in court.
The fact of the matter is that the CMA has used exactly the same soft-soap strategy they did with Viagogo, over whom they obtained a court order that, almost comically, instructed them to stop routinely breaking UK consumer law.
In relation to the current example of scandalous price gouging, StubHub has said the issue of hidden fees was not a part of its business model, and that it had fixed the issue.
Yet it’s a matter of record that, in 2020, StubHub UK was caught breaking a raft of consumer laws – like exaggerating scarcity of tickets and failing to tell buyers that touted tickets would be invalid. Predictably, they got away with a warning.
The bigger Viagogo court order was breached so many times it made a mockery of the CMA’s role.
Demonstrable toothlessness of the CMA was probably a significant factor in persuading the UK government to launch a proper crackdown on rogue sites and touts – via a legal ban on profit from the resale of tickets.
Keir Starmer pledged to bring forward a truly game-changing law that would protect fans. But the inclusion of a legal ticket tout ban as a less emphatic “draft bill” in the King’s Speech was a hammer blow to anyone who has campaigned for this.
The main takeaway from the “draft” status announced in May was that the UK government had been nobbled by lobbyists for the big secondary sites – who peddle nonsense about how touts are good for consumers and for the economy.
When I appeared as a witness at Westminster’s probe into ticket abuse by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in 2017, Viagogo failed to even take their seat.
The lawlessness allowed on their site – and the breaches of UK law – were so indefensible they never bothered to make an effort.
For my part, I told of the investigation of the Daily Record into “supertouts” like Scot Andrew Newman and a host of others who made a fortune off ripping off others, all done on sites that profited hugely from the enterprise.
I told MPs that any referendum on the issue of ticket touting would bring a landslide vote for a crackdown.
The same sentiment would surely ring true today and the outrage over ticket profiteering by FIFA at the World Cup only underlines this.
With the Labour government currently caught up in its own current existential crisis, it may be that one draft bill among a comprehensive legislative programme will not be a number one priority for heir apparent Andy Burnham, who could be Prime Minister within weeks.
But if this party saviour is riding into power on a ticket of being a “man of the people” there are fewer easier ways of justifying that billing than being the hammer of the ticket touts.
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