Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Written Evidence

Memorandum submitted by Simon Broadley

  I write in a personal capacity regarding your inquiry into Ticket Touting [...]

  I would encourage the Secretary of State to resist the cosy embrace of the ticket agencies when seeking to resolve this issue. They are, to my mind, as culpable as the touts themselves in exploiting the public. Long before the public are ripped off by any tout they have been fleeced good and proper by these agencies; the face value of the ticket hiked with a series of greedy, unjustifiable, unavoidable "booking fees", "service charges", "transaction fees" etc. At least the touts are prepared to stand in the rain and into the night outside venues across the country to "earn" their margin.

  A couple of random real-life examples from four major online ticket agencies:

—    Ticketmaster: Pet Shop Boys, Hammersmith Apollo, 6 June 2007,

Face Value Ticket: £29.50,

Service Charge: £4.25,

Standard Postage: £2.75 (yes, that's a first class stamp),

Total Charge: £36.50.

Ticketmaster Margin: £7.00,

—    Seetickets: Keane at O2 Arena, London 21 July 2007,

Face Value Ticket: £25.00,

Booking Fee: £3.25,

Transaction Fee: £4.80,

Total Charge: £33.05,

Seetickets Margin: £8.05.

—    Ticketline: The Police at Cardiff International Arena, 5 September 2007,

Face Value Ticket: £65.00,

Booking Fee: £6.50,

Standard Postage: £1.85,

Total Charge: £73.35,

Ticketline Margin: £8.35.

—    Gigs and Tours: McFly at Hull Arena, 28 November 2007,

Face Value Ticket: £23.50,

Booking Fee: £2.95,

Transaction Fee: £4.80,

Total Charge: £31.25,

Gigs and Tours Margin: £7.75.

  So who's the tout?

  Certainly, the issue of touting needs addressing, but they are not the only ones exploiting the public's simple desire to see their favourite artists perform live.

May 2007

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Prepared 10 January 2008