How to safely buy tickets for an event
How to get in to the event without losing out
Whether it’s a favourite sport, music or festivals, most people love an event. But it can be a nightmare buying the tickets that will admit you to that much-anticipated occasion. Being left in a queue for hours only to miss the tickets or paying hugely inflated costs on a secondary ticket seller website will spoil it for everyone.
So, what are the issues with trying to buy tickets?
When trying to purchase tickets for an event direct from the organiser you may find that you are restricted to being able to buy just 4 tickets or that they sell out before you reach the end of the queue. Yet minutes later they are being sold in other places. When supply can’t keep up with demand problems arise and prices are pushed up.
Beware of touts
“Touts” is a term used for anyone selling tickets using dodgy practices, such as forged tickets, scam ticket offers, stolen tickets, etc.
If you buy any tickets from a tout you may not be able to get your money back. However, you may be able to if the tickets were bought on credit card. If the purchase was over £100 you should be covered by Section 75A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974.
Purchases made on debit cards and below £100 are not covered by the Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. Chargeback, although not part of any act of law, is a voluntary scheme based on rules set by card issuers, such as Mastercard and Visa. Because it isn’t set in law you should use the Consumer Credit Act 1974 where possible, otherwise Chargeback can be applied for similar situations.
Fake websites and scammers
When someone is tricked into sending money via bank transfer (also known as a Faster Payment) to buy goods or services that don’t exist it is known as a purchase scam.
For example this can be done through fake adverts and social media posts, where tickets are offered at discounted prices, or access to events which have already sold out at inflated prices.
Victims are asked to pay upfront for the tickets, but once the payment is made they are left with no tickets with the scammers nowhere to be seen.
Fraudsters also attempt to take over people’s social media accounts to sell fake tickets and perpetrate other scams. James Bores, the founder of Bores.com, is seeing people having their social media accounts compromised in order to try and sell ticket scams to friends and family. Three have been punting Taylor Swift tickets. His company has managed to get Facebook to shut down one of these fake accounts and they are still working on two others.
Bore advises:
The best thing to do is turn on MFA (multi-factor authentication) on your social media accounts. It doesn’t guarantee safety, but it provides much better security than just a password. If anyone asks you for a code to access their account, it’s almost guaranteed to be an attempt to take over your own account. They’ll then try to use that to defraud your friends and family, whether that’s about trying to sell them non-existent tickets, or a whole host of other scams.”
Also be careful of fake websites, made to look like the real thing, which will take your money and not provide the tickets. See James Bore’s guest post on How to shop safely online.
In July 2023 Lloyds Bank issued a ticket scam warning to football fans after a jump in reported incidents. It reported that when tickets outstrip supply, scammers try to cash in by creating fake posts on social media or online marketplaces to advertise tickets that do not exist.
The bank said at the time:
based on analysis of reported fraud cases among its own personal banking customers, the number of people being scammed when buying football tickets more than doubled (a 101% increase) last season compared with the season before, with victims losing £154 on average.”
18 to 24 year olds are particularly likely to fall victim to this type of scam as often the most targeted.
Lloyds Bank reveals over £1 million scammed from Taylor Swift fans
In July 2023 tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour went on sale. 17 April 2024 Lloyds Bank revealed that between July 2023 and March 2024 more than 600 customers had come forward to report being scammed. The average loss for each victim was £332, although in some cases it was more than £1,000. The Bank estimates that there is likely to be at least 3,000 victims across the UK.
These figures are based solely on the bank’s own customer data. It estimates that across the UK there are likely to have been at least 3,000 victims since tickets went on sale, with calculating that over £1 million has been lost to fraudsters so far.
The research showed that the number of reported scam cases relating to concert tickets more than doubled last summer compared to the same period a year earlier. (up by +158%).
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Protecting yourself when buying tickets online
1) Buy from a trusted retailer. Well known platforms. The official tickets sellers or established resellers.
2) Be extra cautious of buying from 3rd party sellers
3) Don’t buy tickets on social media. It is easy for scammers to fake tickets.
4) If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. If the event is sold out you are unlikely to get tickets that aren’t inflated on the secondary ticket seller sites.
5) Use a credit card to pay for tickets. You will be covered by the Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. The credit card company is equally liable so if anything goes wrong it will refund you. Debit cards do not have this cover although you maybe able to use Chargeback which is a voluntary scheme for debit cards and purchases under £100.
Secondary ticket sellers
Websites such as Viagogo and StubHub provide a platform allowing individuals to sell on tickets to other members of the public. This is known as a “secondary” marketplace.
The current legal position under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is:
- additional information to be provided to the consumer by the seller, including seat number (if applicable), the face value and any restrictions that apply to who may use the ticket.
- operators of these sites to report illegal activity relating to the secondary sale of tickets should they become aware of it.
The Government introduced extra new rules for secondary ticket sellers on 6 April 2018 which require them to:
- identify the location to which the ticket provides access, e.g. the particular seat or standing area of the venue
- disclose any restrictions around who can use the ticket or how it must be used (e.g. alongside ID of the original buyer)
- disclose the original price of the ticket
- reveal the details of connections they have with either the online facility on which they are selling, or the organiser of the event for which the ticket is being sold
- supply the unique ticket number (UTN) to a buyer if the event organiser specifies one
Alternatives to paying huge costs
Twickets is a reselling site with a difference. It only allows tickets to be sold at face value and takes a small fee.
Illegal ticket sales on Viagogo
Viagogo ‘mistakenly’ listed resale of England football match tickets
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Issues with secondary ticket sellers
Viagogo charges both a seller fee AND a buyer fee! They charge a huge seller’s fee of 15% of the total ticket price and charge buyers a massive 30% of the total ticket price! This creates substantial profits for the company and causes buyers to be left seriously out of pocket.
StubHub is less transparent. Its website says “There is no set percentage for fees, and fees can change based on ticket price, time to event, updated event information, and supply and demand.”
It also states that its prices are in line with other market places. We can therefore safely assume that these fees are high!
Sometimes we see tickets sell out really quickly only to be sold on these sites within hours at hugely inflated prices. One can only assume touts are buying the tickets purely to make a profit at the expense of genuine fans.
The problems with secondary ticket selling
I regularly appear in the media discussing consumer rights, scams and topical issue. See Helen Dewdney – Consumer Rights Expert & Media Commentator for more details.
Government plans to ban ticket touting to protect fans from rip-offs
New rules planned on secondary ticketing:
- Ticket resale above face value will be illegal – this will be defined in legislation as the original ticket price plus unavoidable fees, including service charges
- Service fees charged by resale platforms will be capped to prevent the price limit being undermined
- Resale platforms will have a legal duty to monitor and enforce compliance with the price cap
- Individuals will be banned from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to buy in the initial ticket sale
CMA action on ticket selling
In 2021, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) set out its concerns about continued non-compliance with consumer law in the sector and published a report titled Secondary ticketing – Recommendations to government for improving consumer protection. The CMA recommended measures to restrict professional touts. These included blocking the bulk-buying of tickets and a requirement that all secondary ticketing sites acquire a licence to operate in the UK.
But in May 2023 the Department for Business and Trade decided against implementing any of the CMA’s recommendations. In its formal response to the CMA recommendations published on 10 May 2023, the Government said it was “too soon to conclude that the only way forward is further legislation focused on this market”.
The Labour Party has proposed to cap ticket resale prices, if it is elected to govern. This would mean that touts would not be able to inflate the face value, which can only be good for consumers.
It is not surprising then that ViaGogo does not agree with Labour’s proposals!
ViaGogo believes that such a plan would drive sales underground, stating:
Imposing resale restrictions and removing safeguards forces fans to an underground market, unverified sites and social media, exposing them to a high risk of scams as well as fraud without any protection.”
Cris Miller, the company’s global MD, cites previous examples of financial loss to fans due to the restrictions being imposed, such as in Australia for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. According to police reports, fans were scammed out of more than 260,000 Australian Dollars (£205,000) in fake tickets for this one tour alone.
The CMA has also acknowledged the difficulties with capping prices, saying:
Leaving aside the theoretical pros and cons, such a ban would practically be very difficult to enforce. The CMA is not aware of any jurisdictions where uncapped resale has been successfully eradicated. The incentives to buy tickets for popular events to resell them at a profit will remain strong. Therefore, the successful implementation of such a ban would likely require a significant ongoing resource commitment to, for example, taking down or blocking access to overseas secondary ticket websites that UK consumers wished to buy from, attempting to take down tickets being offered for sale through social media websites and otherwise tackling other ticket touting methods.”
Whilst it may prove problematic, it may improve the situation and reduce prices for the majority of consumers.
I believe the CMA needs to do more research into how these new legal requirements can be successfully implemented, through a smart combination of policy and technology.
