In its March 2025 response to the UK government’s consultation on the resale of live event tickets, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has formally backed the introduction of a statutory price cap on secondary ticket sales. The regulator argues that, despite past enforcement actions, persistent market failures and consumer harm in the sector warrant stronger legislative intervention.
“The CMA supports the government’s proposal for a resale price cap,” the report states, noting that such a cap would “have a direct effect on resale prices, provided that a sufficient degree of compliance was secured through a well-designed and adequately resourced enforcement framework.”
The UK’s secondary ticketing market has long been plagued by excessive markups, speculative selling, and illegal ticket procurement—largely driven by professional resellers who bulk-purchase tickets and relist them at inflated prices. Although CMA enforcement against major platforms like viagogo and StubHub has produced some reforms—including the removal of misleading urgency messages and the prohibition of pre-sale listings—core structural issues remain.
One of the CMA’s central recommendations is the introduction of a licensing regime for resale platforms, enforced by a dedicated regulatory body. “A licensing approach could help to deliver prompt and effective enforcement in a proportionate, targeted, and cost-effective way,” the regulator notes. Such a regime would simplify enforcement by enabling swift action against unlicensed or non-compliant platforms and “help to support consumer trust and confidence by marking out legitimate resale intermediaries.”
The CMA also recommends that both sellers and platforms be held jointly responsible for compliance with any future price cap. “Given the very large number of active resellers,” the report explains, “making platforms liable for ensuring tickets listed on their sites are compliant would significantly simplify enforcement and improve overall compliance.”
To ensure the cap is enforceable, the CMA emphasizes the need for primary ticket sellers to make original price data publicly accessible. Without such transparency, platforms may struggle to verify compliance, and enforcement could be undermined. The regulator warns that failure to address information asymmetries could distort competition in favor of resale platforms owned by primary sellers.
On the scope of the price cap, the CMA expresses a clear preference for broad applicability: “A price cap which only applies in limited circumstances may mean that incentives for professional resellers to legally engage in the ticket market would remain—along with the potential for very high resale prices for exempt tickets.”
Acknowledging that price caps can create enforcement challenges, the CMA cautions against underestimating the incentives for circumvention. “For high-demand events, there will be strong incentives to circumvent the cap,” including migration to informal resale channels like social media or so-called “pop-up” sites.
The regulator also encourages government scrutiny of buyer fees, warning that resale platforms could offset the cap by inflating service charges. “Platforms appear likely to have the incentive (and potentially the ability) to charge significantly higher buyer fees than under an uncapped model,” potentially undermining the policy’s consumer protection aims.
In its concluding remarks, the CMA reinforces that the success of any intervention will hinge on enforcement: “Any new requirements will need to be accompanied by effective enforcement. Without it, platforms may be slow to comply, and resellers may simply shift their activity to less visible channels.”
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