Fairer way to allocate tickets being considered, says Culture Secretary

A “fairer” system of how tickets are allocated in concert sales for artists such as Oasis is being looked at, the Culture Secretary has said.

Lisa Nandy said a new allocation model could improve transparency, and prevent surges in the price of tickets after they have gone on sale.

The Government is currently consulting on the impact of dynamic pricing and proposed plans to cap the price of resale tickets.

Some Oasis fans were left watching the price of standard tickets rise to more than double the original price – from £148 to £355 – as they waited in the TicketMaster queue last year.

For tickets sold on the secondary market, mark-ups are more than 50% according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), while investigations by Trading Standards have uncovered evidence of tickets being resold for up to six times their original cost.

Ms Nandy told the PA news agency that the Government wants to make the system “fairer for fans”.

Speaking during a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, West Midlands, on Thursday, she said: “Certainly when it comes to secondary ticketing, it’s widely agreed that there are rip-off practices that are taking place, and that’s why this Government is taking action on that.

“We launched a consultation about how best to protect fans from rip-off secondary ticketing that closes in April and, as part of that, we’re looking at dynamic pricing and whether there are ways that we can make that system much fairer for fans.

“That includes more transparency – one of the problems with the recent Oasis gig was that many fans had no idea that the dynamic pricing was in place.

“They waited for hours to get to the front of the queue only to find the tickets had got to a price way beyond what they could afford.

“We’re also looking at whether there are fairer models of allocating tickets that would mean that you didn’t get this huge price inflation and these surges at the moment that tickets go on sale.”