EU Parliament to ban the use of bots in ticket purchasing

This move signals the first time the EU has directly addressed the issue of ticket touting and is set to strengthen existing regulation through the inclusion of maximum buying limits, regulation obliging resellers to declare if they are a professional seller and the provision of a minimum standard by which all members must abide.

Ticket touting has been a colossal issue in Ireland, seeing artists like U2 (pictured above), Radiohead and Ed Sheeran selling out concerts in minutes, only to have the tickets reappear online for exorbitant prices.

Once the legislation has been officially adopted by the European Council, which will likely be in June, Member States will be given a period of two years to transpose the amendments into national law.

The Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT) - on behalf of promoters, managers, trade bodies, grassroots consumer action groups and anti-ticket touting organisations – raised awareness of this issue on EU level by proposing test and coordinating lobbying for this legislation’s inclusion.

This year, a study on ticket scalping methods revealed that bots contribute to 42.2% of activity on primary platforms, which is a huge increase from 2018’s 12.3%.

Daniel Dalton, UK MEP, has said, “Everyone apart from touts loses out from bot bulk-buying of tickets.

“Real fans are either unable to see their favourite team or artist or are forced to pay many times the face value price, whilst event organisers are seeing their purchasing limits flagrantly violated.

“So this first ban at a European level is an important first step, with the possibility to go further in future depending on how the ban works in practice.”