Two big music ticket controversies shake the industry
Image credit: Claudio Schwarz
This week two huge stories have broken shedding a light on the power of ticket touters and the personal data of Ticketmaster users leaking.
Online ticketing for events is a rocky business. It has been plagued by ticket touts for years, a practice which makes artists, venues, and fans suffer. Many ticketing companies have been complicit in the act.
This year, the EU ruled to fight ticket scalpers with new laws. Whilst progress is being made, the ticketing industry around the world still faces challenges, as evidenced by news this week. It has come out that ticket touts in the UK have put £73,000 forward to fight against plans to restrict ticket resales.
The UK Labour Party have put forward a plan to put a 10% cap on the resale of tickets. Rob Davies, investigating for The Guardian, reported that £73,000 was committed to lobbying against the plan at an event in London. It included a group from the US called Coalition For Ticket Fairness. The event’s attendees were told that if the plan succeeds “we are all fucked”.
FanFair are an organisation campaigning against for-profit ticket touting. Adam Webb of FanFair spoke to Complete Music Update, saying: “[The report] reveals the true face of what we now commonly refer to as ‘secondary ticketing’, which is essentially a deep-seated collusion of interests between touts and platforms, all dancing to the tune of US scalpers and their investors.”
Labour seem firm in their plans and unlikely to back down to pressure. In fact, Labour MP Sharon Hodgson seems emboldened by the opposition, saying: “Following fourteen years of my campaigning on this issue, I am immensely proud that Labour has decided to put fans first and include regulating the secondary ticketing black market into its election manifesto.”
Huge leak of user data in Ticketmaster hack
Ticketmaster have suffered an incredible breach of data in the last week. A group of hackers reveal that they have stolen 1.3 terabytes of data from the Ticketmaster platform. They report that they have taken the personal data of over half a billion ticket buyers.
Hackers seem to have breached Live Nation’s servers, the owning company of Ticketmaster. The stolen data includes names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, order information, and “partial” payment card data – the last four digits of card numbers and expiry dates – for over 500 million customers.
The Australian Department of Home Affairs are already taking action, writing that they are “working with Ticketmaster to understand the incident”. The huge data breach puts global eyes on Ticketmaster. Their parent Live Nation is already facing pressure to sell the ticketing company in the US, under allegations of “anticompetitive conduct”. Congress have accused Live Nation of having a dominance over the market.