UK Plans Legislation to Cap Ticket Resale at Face Value

The UK government announced plans on November 19 to introduce legislation banning the resale of tickets for concerts, sports, theater, comedy, and other live events above their original face value, aiming to curb practices by ticket resellers known as touts.

The proposed rules, outlined in a joint memo from the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, define face value as the initial ticket price plus unavoidable fees, such as service charges. Resale platforms will face a legal duty to monitor and enforce the price cap, with their own service fees limited to prevent circumvention. Individuals will be prohibited from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to purchase during the primary sale, targeting the use of automated bots to acquire bulk quantities. The measures apply to secondary ticketing sites like StubHub and Viagogo, as well as social media platforms where tickets are traded. Violations could lead to fines of up to 10 percent of a company's global turnover, enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority under powers from the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy described...