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UK Politicians Support Having Musicians Paid Multiple Times If Tix Are Resold
from the first-sale-is-for-suckers dept
A month ago, we noted that the managers of some well-known bands were pushing for a rule that would require anyone reselling concert tickets to contribute some of their profits back to the musician. It's difficult to see how this is reasonable. If anything it sounds like double dipping. In a normal transaction, after you've sold something, you no longer have a right to have any say over what the buyer does with his purchase. If he sells it for more money, that's his to keep. That certainly seems fair to everyone. What is clouding this when it comes to ticket sales is that professional ticket resellers have been monopolizing the ticket business, figuring out ways (sometimes using questionable means) to buy up all hot tickets within seconds of them going on sale. They then quickly turn around and resell them, sometimes at greatly inflated prices. This is upsetting many fans for completely understandable reasons -- and so the government is trying to figure out what to do about these "touts" (which in the US we call "scalpers").
The recommended policy starts off well by saying it's not a good idea to ban ticket sales, but then supports requiring any resale to kick back some of the profit to the musician or sports team. That actually seems like the worst of all world's situation. That's unlikely to stop ticket resales and jacked up prices, and it actually rewards the artists for getting the tickets into the hands of resellers. It gives those performers a chance to double dip on much higher ticket sale prices, while allowing them to shrug and say that they really priced them at an affordable level. There are ways to deal with the issues raised by ticket resales, none of which require government intervention -- but it's difficult to see how the proposed solution does anything at all to help, while doing plenty to eat away at the concept of having ownership of a product you actually bought.
