Ticketing, Tech and Timing – How Technology Has Changed Live Events

At the end of last year, the UK government announced plans for new laws to clamp down on ticket reselling, citing widespread concern that fans are being ripped off by excessive mark-ups and opaque pricing practices. The proposals sit alongside wider reforms to UK consumer law designed to respond to digital markets, online platforms and new pricing technologies.

This blog explores the role technology plays in modern ticketing markets, what the government is proposing, and what these changes could mean for online price transparency more broadly.

What role does technology play in ticket pricing?

Technology now underpins almost every stage of the ticketing lifecycle; while innovation has increased access and convenience, it has also enabled practices that can drive up prices and reduce transparency.

Online reselling — digital platforms have made it a lot easier to resell tickets at scale, opening access to larger international markets, which increases the resale value. Alongside established resale platforms, social media has created more informal and largely unregulated channels for ticket resales: including through community groups, fan pages and organised marketplace profiles. The proposed regulation will focus on major resale platforms; and yet enforcement may prove more challenging across dispersed social media platforms and messaging apps, where transactions are harder to monitor and often take place through direct messaging or informal channels.

Dynamic pricing — dynamic pricing is frequently cited as a key driver of higher ticket prices. Under this model, prices fluctuate in real time based on demand, availability or consumer behaviour. While dynamic pricing is common across sectors such as travel and retail, its use for event tickets has proven particularly controversial.

Additional regulations to address price transparency were introduced through the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act (DMCCA). For example, following the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) investigation into Ticketmaster, the department introduced new pricing requirements:

• Providing clearer information on how and when prices may change;

• Giving fans advance notice (for example, 24 hours) of pricing changes;
• Improving transparency during online queues;
• Ending misleading labels inaccurately suggesting scarcity or urgency.

The CMA has been reviewing and updating its price-transparency guidance following the introduction of the DMCCA, with updated requirements covering a range of online pricing methods: including dynamic pricing, drip pricing (where the final price is not shown from the beginning) and fake reviews. Where ticketing platforms are not compliant, the CMA can impose fines of up to 10% of global turnover.

Online bots — automated bots and sophisticated software have transformed the speed and scale at which tickets can be purchased; bots can easily operate across multiple platforms and jurisdictions, allowing them to outcompete individual buyers by snapping up large volumes of tickets within seconds of release.

Government analysis has suggested the top 10% of ticket resellers account for more than 70% of all secondary ticket sales, often at mark-ups of around 75%. While bots and automated-software use are not inherently unlawful and have legitimate applications — including web crawling, data analysis and as a core component of AI development — their use in ticketing has raised concerns for policymakers seeking to rebalance markets in favour of consumers.

What is being introduced?

The government plans to introduce new legislation that will ban the reselling of live-event tickets for more than the original cost. The new law will apply to tickets for live events — including sport, concerts, theatre and comedy shows — with additional rules introduced to cap service charges.

These proposals build on a public consultation launched last year and align with the government’s aim to boost consumer protection while supporting the live-events industry. The measures also sit alongside wider reforms under the 2024 DMCCA, which strengthens the CMA’s enforcement powers and updates consumer law for the digital economy.

The government will share more details on the design later this year, but the draft legislation is expected to clarify the following:

• That tickets cannot be resold for above the original ticket price (plus unavoidable fees, including service charges);
• That service charges will be capped to prevent undermining the price cap;
• That resale platforms have a legal duty to monitor and enforce compliance; That individuals are banned from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to buy in the initial ticket sale.

These measures follow sustained concerns about rising ticket prices and resale practices, particularly after the CMA investigation into Ticketmaster, which attracted significant public attention following criticism of dynamic pricing during the sale of Oasis tickets last summer. Evidence gathered by the CMA suggested that typical mark-ups on secondary tickets often exceed 50%, raising questions about fairness, transparency and consumer harm.

What does this mean for online pricing more generally?

The details for how ticketing platforms will be expected to cap and implement these proposals have not yet been confirmed; but enforcement mechanisms, platform -liability thresholds and the way in which caps will be calculated in practice will all be addressed in further consultations. The proposed legislation will also have to address concerns that introducing a price cap will push ticket sales into unregulated ‘‘black market’’ resales, increasing the risk of fraud and raising the risk of harm to consumers. Evidence shows fraud rates are typically almost four-times higher in price-capped jurisdictions.

The government’s focus on ticket resales is part of a broader shift in UK consumer-protection regulation, aiming to ensure online marketplaces, platforms and intermediaries take greater responsibility for pricing practices occurring on their services. This work on ticketing and dynamic pricing forms part of the CMA’s wider price-transparency work, which recently included updated guidance and supervisory and enforcement action across sectors regarding drip pricing and fake online reviews. It is worth noting that similar concerns are being examined internationally, with the EU under pressure to introduce similar measures and stricter controls on ticket resale and automated purchasing.

These measures targeting online pricing practices also point to the government’s efforts to reduce business regulation and to target regulation impacting consumers directly. This has been particularly noticeable in the CMA’s work, which has pivoted in the last twelve months from large global businesses to a focus on domestic consumer issues: such as veterinary pricing, online ticketing and public-sector procurement.

This is a rapidly evolving space; businesses should remain aware of requirements and of the potential for further guidance and increased scrutiny ahead of the finalised legislation.