Appeal for federal law to combat ticket scalping

The Senate Economics References Committee has this afternoon made a series of ticket scalping recommendations in which committee member Nick Xenophon, Independent Senator for South Australia, called for the implementation of national law to combat the problem.

On 11 December 2013 the Senate referred an inquiry into ticket scalping in Australia to the Senate Economics References Committee for inquiry and report. Six recommendations have today been issued, among them the establishment of an industry-wide code of conduct; a consumer education strategy and an ongoing inquiry with the Fair Trade Offices to obtain a greater understanding of ticket scalping practices.

Meanwhile, Xenophon, who sits on the committee, published a raft of additional comments which lobby for stronger measures. He urges the Australian government to adopt a national approach to scalping with the amendment of Consumer Law, based on elements of existing state laws. Each state has adopted a different legal framework for tackling ticket scalping.

He adds that ticket re-selling should be permitted “with a specified cap above the ticket price of, say, 10 per cent to take into account the administrative costs associated with purchasing a ticket from the primary market.”

The detailed report also criticised the primary market. “The committee understands…..the existence of a secondary market often reflects a failure in the primary market: the secondary market is able to meet a consumer need that the primary market is not satisfying,” it states.

Five practices in the primary market were singled out for particular criticism – corporate and hospitality packages; sponsorship deals; allowing bulk purchases; poor timing when placing tickets on sale and restrictions on ticket refunds or transfers.

The Committee based its recommendations on evidence supplied by some 21 companies and individuals. Included among those was The Ticket Brokers Association (TBA) which catalogued behaviours in the primary market. The TBA drew attention to a number of scenarios including:

“A tendency by music festival promoters to substitute artists (including headlining artists), with no right of refund.”

“At the general public onsale, a tendency by event promoters…to hold back the best tickets as part of its ’packages’, only to release the unbundled tickets months later, purportedly ’due to the finalisation of production information’.”

Meanwhile, the Live Performance Australia argued in its submission that the state-based anti-scalping legislation in Australia was ’generally futile and ineffective’. It explained: “Current available evidence, both domestically and internationally, illustrates that specific anti-scalping legislation is unwarranted, ineffective and unenforceable due to the inability of legislation to have an impact on the online operations of the secondary market.”

Ticketmaster also stated that state-based consumer protection had “proven to be either ineffective or onerous to both consumers and industry, with a potentially negative long-term impact on event attendance.”