Team set to test new law in war against the ticket touts
A GROUP of cyber detectives in Yorkshire is set to become the first to enforce fines of £5,000 or more on industrial scale touts for reselling tickets online at hugely inflated prices.
As it emerged World Cup tickets for the England vs Tunisia match are being marketed on secondary ticketing sites for up to £11,300, a team of investigators at County Hall, in Northallerton, is preparing to tackle those who flout the law surrounding secondary ticketing.
Concerns have been mounting in recent years over online resale of tickets and the information consumers receive during such sales. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 made it illegal for operators of secondary ticketing websites to sell tickets without providing details about the original face value of the ticket, the seat the ticket is for and restrictions on the use of the ticket.
A spokesman for campaign group FanFair Alliance, which was initially funded by the management of bands including One Direction, Mumford and Sons and Little Mix, said: “We have been calling for enforcement since the campaign started. It is not particularly hard to see breaches of ticketing law on platforms.”
North Yorkshire County Council is being provided with funding to tackle breaches of the legislation as part of its work with the National Trading Standards eCrime team (NTSeCT).
When the County Hall team is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that secondary ticketing provider has not provided the correct information, the council will impose fines of “a standard amount of £5,000 per breach”.
A report to the council’s executive says: “In deciding the amount of financial penalty to impose, the amount of the penalty must be sufficient to ensure that it will act as an effective incentive to compliance.”