European festivals & promoters unite to fight ticket abuse

Eleven of Europe's leading promoters and festivals have joined forces to create a Continent-wide movement to eradicate scalpers and promote face-value resale across the secondary market.

They formed the Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT) at the Dutch live music conference Eurosonic Noorderslag this week.

The founders are from Germany, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Belgium Ireland and the Netherlands.

Neo Sala, founder and head of Spain’s Doctor Music Festival said: “Governments need to understand speculative ticket resale is an abusive and unethical practice that harms people, and they need to approve laws that make it virtually impossible.

“We need legal tools that facilitate the immediate preventive close down of websites that put tickets on sale without having been authorised by the organiser of the event.”

FEAT’s focus includes lobbying for more effective legislation at national and EU level, connecting live industry professionals as well as collecting data and research.

It says that with politicians across Europe becoming more sympathetic to ripped-off consumers, this is the time to speak as a unified voice and get laws passed.

It has already started parliamentary discussions on secondary ticketing and begun forming a legal group to coordinate activities on ticketing regulation and claims by scalpers on search engines.

Coincidentally, yesterday marked the deadline by the Competition And Markets Authority for UK secondary ticketing sites to comply with its court order to improve information about tickets listed for resale.