My Lords, I will start with a couple of apologies. The first is for arriving a few seconds into the speech of my noble friend Lord Moynihan. That was partly to do with the excellent
speed of the Minister in marshalling us through this, while simultaneously being due to a slight go-slow on the part of my guide dog in getting here this afternoon. I also apologise for not being able to speak to this amendment in Committee; it was my birthday, and I wrongly prioritised a celebratory dinner ahead of speaking on that occasion.
What are we trying to achieve with this? It is not complicated; it does not say anything negative about the concept of a secondary market for tickets. It is simply about this: if we can improve, we will get more tickets into the hands of more sports fans for more events, and we will drive a far more efficient ticketing operation across sport, art, culture and music.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised a very important point: what is a ticket? That question was not taken up by the Minister on that occasion, so I will tempt her this evening into perhaps going into it in her response, because it is a key point. If we are talking about tickets, it makes sense for us to consider what a ticket is, and crucially, off the back of that, it seems reasonable to consider what a ticket could and perhaps should be. That involves consideration of the physical, the electronic ticket, its commercial and legal characteristics, and what is set around it as regards transferability and negotiability. It seems to be quite sensible to think, debate and discuss all those elements so that we are all clear as regards what we are talking about.
If I am lucky enough to get a ticket for Centre Court at Wimbledon, but then a week before I am struck down with a late spring flu, it seems perfectly reasonable and absolutely right that I should be allowed to resell that ticket to somebody who was not lucky enough to get it in the primary sale. Similarly, it seems absolutely reasonable that I should not be able to make a profit on that ticket, and should be able to get back only its face value. Even more so, if from the outset I pitched into the ticket market with no intention of going anywhere near Centre Court and SW19, it seems absolutely reasonable that there should be no proper purpose in the deriving of profit from that purchase.
The ticket is not a piece of real property; it is a licence—an opportunity. It is the chance to sit on one of those hallowed seats at Centre Court, not something to put away and deal with as if it was some property that can be sold to the highest bidder, who perhaps has nothing to do with sport.
At London 2012 we probably had the most discussions around the senior leadership table about ticketing, because it matters. We knew that whatever we did, most people would not get one of those tickets to the greatest show on earth. We had to be absolutely clear and robust in how we structured that ticket offer so that, even if people were unlucky and did not get a ticket, they could at least see exactly what we did at every stage and see that it was transparent, fair and that there was no secondary market.
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The only mistake we made in the athletics stadium was in not making the stand on the home straight able to seat 2 million spectators—because that is how many
people applied to get a ticket to see the Bolt man run 100 metres. Two million people wanted that ticket, which is why the ballot made sense, and why we were effectively, through legislation, able to have a market that delivered tickets to sport fans. We drove revenue, got fans in front, and not one illegal counterfeit ticket was recovered or recorded at any of our Games venues. There were no sheepskin jackets or greased-back hairdos, standing in groups saying, “I’ll buy or sell”. We see those kinds of things at football, cricket, rugby and music concerts up and down this country, and they are replicated online in not much a better way.
We have so many reasons to consider this today. In many ways, sport, art, culture and music are what it is to be British.
There is no question that in the amendment’s intention it goes to the heart of what we need to do, but compared to the Olympic and Paralympic legislation, as noble Lords have already pointed out, it takes only a tiny step. However, alongside that, sports organisations can take steps in the primary market. In a digital world, botnets are easy to eradicate. Botnets begone! Sports organisations can do a lot in the primary market to eradicate a lot of the difficulties we see in the secondary market. Similarly, one could argue that sport could establish a secondary market for tickets, so that a condition on the ticket means that the only place that it can be resold is on a sport exchange—a sport secondary market platform where it can be sold only at face value. That is a thought; it is not a point for today; but it shows that this debate is wider than the amendment, which has absolutely the right intent at its heart.
It is right that we consider this today, because if sport, government—everybody—can work together to make this right, we can get close to eradicating the bad, celebrating the good, and getting tickets into the hands of sports, music and theatre fans right across the country. I put it to the Minister that we have 1.5 billion reasons to consider this extremely carefully this evening.