The Ticket Black Market

The Black Market for tickets

Ever since live music and sporting events started selling tickets, the act of buying those tickets legally and attempting to resale them, typically by a direct or persistent approach (known as touting) has been thriving. Even though the act of touting is not in itself illegal, there is a growing outcry over vastly inflated event ticket prices caused by the secondary-ticketing market. Touting is a problem at every gig, sports event and convention but an obscure favorite example of mine is touting at Wimbledon.

It's no secret that Wimbledon is the most exclusive and premium tennis championship in the world so it's barely a secret that there is an exclusivity of court tickets for the tennis fortnight. However, this sheer exclusivity of show court tickets drives demand and
hence profit margins through the roof. You can already hear the touts licking their lips. After all, this is an event where every year, thousands camp on the streets for the chance to buy centre court tickets.

"Working the streets is a fairly easy way to make quick money," said one regular tout who spoke to VICE Sports on condition of anonymity. "There's so many people willing to pay five or 10 times the regular price of a ticket in cash, especially as the tournament goes on. First or second round centre court tickets go for a few hundred while the cheapest men's finals tickets are worth around £175, but you can sell them for a grand or two without a problem. Online you can get far bigger profit margins."
In addition to this, Wimbledon issues several hundred No.3 and Centre court tickets every day to its online ticket supplier Ticketmaster, with the intention of making the tickets more accessible to those who are unable to queue or did not succeed in the ticket ballot for the event. 

Touting and the secondary-ticketing market causes many problems for consumers and fans of these events as the resale of tickets at inflated prices puts them beyond the reach of the audiences for whom they were intended, such as supporters involved in a sport, or fans who follow particular artists. Another example is that the consumers lack protection, e.g. they may have inadequate or misleading information about the location in the venue and face value of the ticket (if it exists at all), and what terms and conditions apply to it (including conditions restricting transfer and allowing cancellation of tickets transferred in breach), and they may be unable to obtain refunds when events are cancelled.

The effects of touting not only hits the consumers and fans but it also hits the producers, promoters and even governments. profits taken by the secondary market have direct and indirect effects on revenue for promoters and performers, e.g. promoters may be deprived of revenue when, for instance, tickets sold at a discount are sold on at face value or above; performers lose out because their fees are based on face value ticket sales; resale of tickets at inflated prices reduces the amount consumers are willing to spend at events or on tickets for other events; resources (both financial and administrative) have to be diverted to anti-touting measures including the cost of police(affecting the government budget and the tax payers) and extra stewards. in addition, touting may affect the country’s ability to continue to attract world-class events for instance the Rugby World Cup in 2015 and Football World Cup in 2018, for which bids are being prepared (and there is an increasing trend by international governing bodies of sports to write into bid requests that host nations must control ticketing in similar terms to those that exist for the Olympic Games)

In an attempt to crack down on street touting in the past three years, the local councils around Wimbledon announced a plan to transform the All England Club and the zones around Southfields and Wimbledon Park tube station into tout-free zones, via stricter monitoring in partnership with the Metropolitan police. Anyone caught selling tickets on the streets faces immediate arrest, while anyone suspected of doing so can be ordered by police to leave the area for 24 hours, or else face arrest. Fans who are believed to have purchased a ticket from a tout or secondary sources can be refused entry. However, many touts have simply responded by taking their business online, selling their tickets via websites such as Gumtree, Viagogo and StubHub.

Sources

https://sports.vice.com/en_uk/article/inside-wimbledon39s-black-market-ticket-trade-uk-translation

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/may/21/ticket-tout-criminalised-inflated-prices-secondary-ticketing

https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmcumeds/202/202.pdf