Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 78-79)

MR JOE COHEN, MR GRAHAM BURNS, MR DOMINIC TITCHENER-BARRETT, MR ERIC BAKER, MR PAUL DRAKE AND MR ALASTAIR MCGOWAN

26 JUNE 2007

  Chairman: We now turn to the secondary market and can I welcome Alasdair McGowan and Paul Drake of eBay, Eric Baker of viagogo, Dominic Titchener-Barrett of the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents and Joe Cohen of Seatwave.

  Q78  Alan Keen: Good morning. I had a discussion with some sports fans in my constituency recently when I knew we were going to do this inquiry. They talk mainly about the people selling tickets outside sports grounds, saying, "Got any tickets, got any tickets, does anybody want a ticket?" They regarded them as scum. Do you think that is a fair description?

  Mr Titchener-Barrett: I think that is an ignorant position to take, na-­ve in the extreme. I would draw a very clear distinction between selling in the secondary ticket market and ticket touting. There is a clear distinction and today all we have heard is emotional arguments based on the very worst aspects of ticket touting. We have not actually heard the other side of the story about the movements we have taken in-house to try and regulate and improve our image. I do not think that is a fair assumption. That is a very one-sided, one-eyed view of the industry.

  Q79  Alan Keen: I was talking about the people outside football grounds selling tickets.

  Mr Titchener-Barrett: Again, I would draw a very clear distinction between the individuals that we have here and the people that my organisation represents and those people that represent those kinds of persons. My personal opinion is that is the unacceptable face of the secondary ticket market. In fact, I would call it a tertiary market; I would not actually include them as part of the secondary market. I would say it is a tertiary market operating under their own remit.

  Mr Baker: I think what you are hearing from your constituents highlights a lot of what we have heard here today, which is that where fans are unhappy it is because you deal with people who give you fraudulent tickets. It is not safe and secure, it is not guaranteed and they do not know who they are dealing with. Whether you are buying a ticket, a car, a piece of art or any goods, if you are dealing with someone like that, you probably would call someone like that "scum". What we have tried to do at viagogo is create a safe, secure, guaranteed online mechanism so the fans that we work with, be it at Manchester United, Everton or Chelsea, are very happy that they do not have to deal with these characters outside the stadium, and when you give consumers a safe, secure alternative, you can eliminate the type of shenanigans that go on outside a stadium.

  Mr Cohen: I would like to add to that, I think it probably helps the Committee if we explain how Seatwave works as well. Seatwave is a marketplace where people can buy and sell tickets and we provide a guarantee that we call a "ticket integrity", which means that you will receive exactly the ticket that you purchased on the site in good time for the event and, if you do not, we will give you a 150% refund on your money. The other thing we provide is something called "ticket cover", which is an insurance product that we have underwritten, which means—and actually, Mr Goldsmith was wrong about this—that if there are traffic delays on the way to an event, if there is rail disruption, if you are injured, if you have illness or death in the family, you will get a 100% refund for your ticket. If the event is cancelled and rescheduled at a time that you cannot attend or it is not rescheduled at all, you will get a 100% refund not only on the price of the ticket but on any mark-up that was involved and any booking fees involved, and that is at no additional cost to consumers; we underwrite and pay for that entire cost. There is no-one in this room who can say that they do the same thing to protect consumers in the way that Seatwave does.

  Mr Burns: With respect to my colleague Mr Cohen, ASTA was formed, as many people are aware, to really create an aura of confidence within the secondary market and these guidelines that Mr Cohen talks about are exactly the guidelines that we adopted as an association off the back of the guidelines used by the National Association of Ticket Brokers in America, with whom we are associated.



 
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