Sting the Touts

The Culture, Media, and Sport Parliament Select Committee have announced that they are going to conduct an investigation into ticket touting.

News articles can be found: here and here

Right...

• Have you ever tried to buy a ticket for an event, only to see it sell-out in minutes?
• Were you frustrated that minutes later hundreds or even thousands were for sale on Internet auction sites at vastly inflated Prices?
• Have you ever bought a ticket to an event months in advance, only to find closer to the event that you couldn’t make it?

Basically - touts are going to be (hopefully) eliminated from football!

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/si2007/20070790.htm

There is a petition at the governments website to stop touts from operating.

You can find it here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/tickettouts/

Ticket touts are making powerful enemies

As a fixture in the nation's sporting and cultural calendar, the Glastonbury music festival now ranks alongside football's Cup Final or racing's Grand National. The 136,500 tickets for this year's event sold out in less than two hours when they went on sale on April 1st, though they cost £145 apiece.

Britain's five biggest sports have signed a letter of complaint to the government demanding they be given the same legal protection against ticket touts that will be enjoyed by the London Olympics in 2012. The governing bodies of football, cricket, tennis, and rugby league and union have asked the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, to reform the "two-tier" system surrounding ticket sales in British sport.

TOUTS who make obscene profits by selling tickets for top football matches and concerts should be punished, a Glasgow MP said today.

John Robertson says the touts are getting away with it because there's no Government policy on ticket touting although it was a Labour Party manifesto commitment in 1997.

He urged the Office of Fair Trading to conclude its three-year long negotiations with the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers so people are given more protection.
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Ticket Tout.com, set up in February 2006, went into administration on 6 March.

“The company’s offices are now closed and no further trading will take place,” said a statement by joint administrators Lane Bednash and Mark Reynolds of Valentine & Co insolvency practitioners.

Initial investigations suggested there was “no possibility of refunds or of providing tickets to consumers who have placed orders with the company due to lack of available funds and the quantum of the claims”, the statement said.