Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Livsey of Talgarth (Liberal Democrat). It was answered on Thursday, 5 July 2007.

Ticket Touts

Question: My Lords, I declare an interest as a debenture holder at the Millennium Stadium. It is very well known that, for example, you can find on websites such as amazon.com tickets at greatly inflated prices with a lot of money being made out of them by the people concerned. I was very pleased to hear the Minister say that he is examining online reselling, which is very difficult to control. I know that for some arts events it is impossible to buy tickets in the normal way because a lot of these tickets have been swept up and sold on Amazon at a great profit, which prevents other people getting them at the proper price. It is a serious problem.

Answer: My Lords, there is a difference between the kind of event that the noble Lord was alluding to in the last part of his question and the crown jewel events, the big events that occur at stadiums, which are regular events such as test matches in cricket, the rugby internationals and so on. On the latter, we are looking to see whether legislation might help with regard to those regular events where the sporting authorities are pressing us for some control over the resale of tickets. But the noble Lord will recognise that there are other areas which are much looser in these terms and what goes on on eBay is what other people take advantage of.

Secondary information