Some of the most powerful ticket touts in the UK have discussed a secret plan to try to scupper a Labour crackdown on the industry via a lobbying campaign, footage filmed by the Guardian reveals.
Touts and representatives of major resale websites such as Viagogo and StubHub gathered at a private event this month organised by the US-based lobby group the Coalition for Ticket Fairness (CTF), which outlined a plan to target MPs.
They met to discuss Labour’s plan to outlaw the resale of gig, theatre and sports for more than 10% above face value. While the government has rejected proposals to strengthen consumer legislation on touting – with the business minister Kevin Hollinrake even revealing he had “quite happily used Viagogo on many occasions” – Labour is expected to unveil tough restrictions on the practice in its general election manifesto.
The policy has been drawn up in response to a string of reports of fans being exploited by touts, who often work in tandem with prominent ticket resale sites.
Addressing more than 100 guests who had each paid $240 (£189) to be there, one of the UK’s biggest ticket touts warned that “we are fucked” if Labour’s clampdown went ahead.
At the event, held in a basement venue beside the Thames, touts pledged £73,000 to hire a “bulletproof” political lobbyist to sway politicians. They were given assurances that their names would remain private and would never be linked to the lobbying campaign.
One of the most well-known attenders was Michael Mayiger, who was convicted of a £2m fraud in 2012 after he admitted using false names to obtain Premier League football club memberships.
Mayiger has since set up his own Switzerland-based ticket business, called Gigsberg. Gigsberg was one of the sponsors of the CTF’s event. Mayiger personally pledged £5,000 on the night.
The centrepiece of the evening was a presentation and fundraising effort. Opening remarks came from the president of the newly formed CTF UK branch, Tony McGowen, a veteran ticket trader.
Attenders were warned of the risks posed by Labour’s proposals, which are designed to prevent touts from hoovering up tickets for events such as gigs by Ed Sheeran and Adele, or the West End play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, in order to charge huge markups.
“We are going to fight parliament, we’re going to fight government … because if we don’t, bottom line is we are all fucked,” McGowen told guests.
He said CTF was ready to hire a well-known political lobbyist who had advised a former prime minister and would be able to influence policy.
He said a paid lobbyist could help “guide parliament and to fight back against all the bullshit that a Labour government potentially want to throw at us”.
McGowen insisted that none of the guests would be publicly connected to any lobbying. “No one in this room needs to have their name put near anything that we are doing,” he said. “Everything is done through another source, so don’t worry about identities coming out, because it’s not something that anyone in this room wants and it’ll never happen.”
The lobbyist whom the CTF said it had chosen told the Guardian that they had met the organisation once more than a year ago but had not agreed to work for it and never would. The Guardian has chosen not to name the lobbyist.
McGowen was followed on stage by Jason Berger and Scot Tobias, senior figures from CTF’s more established operation in the US, where for-profit ticket resale is much more widespread. The duo said they had used lobbying to water down anti-tout legislation in multiple US states.
“It takes a long time to change a law,” said Berger. “It’s a lot easier to … stop the law from being written.”
Tobias said politicians who were on the receiving end of lobbying would “come to your aid and they’ll change laws in your favour”. “But this doesn’t come for free,” he said.
“I don’t want to put anyone on the spot,” he added as he moved from table to table encouraging touts to publicly promise to contribute thousands of pounds each.
In less than half an hour, attenders had agreed to put £73,000 towards the proposed lobbying campaign. Tobias said companies including Viagogo and StubHub had already “committed to the cause”.
Two Viagogo executives attended the event but the company told the Guardian that they were there for “networking reasons”, adding that the company was not funding the CTF. Gigsberg confirmed that it had sponsored the event “to promote open dialogue on ticket fairness”.
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Representatives were also there from StubHub International as well as Vivid Seats, which intends to launch a UK business within weeks.
During networking drinks at the start of the evening, some attenders boasted of making huge sums from selling thousands of tickets, using methods that experts said were illegal. One said he regularly sold tickets to football matches – a practice that was made illegal in England in response to the Hillsborough disaster.
The resale of gig and theatre tickets is not illegal in itself, although several touts have been convicted of fraud offences in relation to the practices they have used to acquire and sell them.
Two touts at the event, one of whom said he had sold £100,000 of tickets last year, discussed buying email addresses in bulk, making it possible to apply several times for access to pre-sale ticket releases for Taylor Swift’s UK tour later this year.
Reg Walker, a security consultant and ticketing expert, said: “The use of multiple addresses and identities to harvest tickets is fraud. This is supported by several convictions for fraud and fraudulent trading in recent years.”
One attender named Labour’s Sharon Hodgson, who has been the force behind the party’s policy on ticket touting, as a major threat to the industry.
Hodgson told the Guardian that the “outrageous behaviour of these touts will only strengthen Labour’s resolve”, adding: “I look forward to the day when a Labour government will end this black market and start putting fans first.”
A spokesperson for the anti-touting music industry group FanFair Alliance said the Guardian’s findings appeared to reveal “a deep-seated collusion between large-scale ticket touts and the biggest resale platforms”, describing it as a “black market hiding in plain sight”.
The spokesperson added: “We urgently need UK politicians to intervene, to protect fans from exploitation and prevent these parasites gaining a stranglehold on our music and culture.”
CTF said it was “not currently engaged in any lobbying activities in the UK” and that “we have no timeline to begin doing so”.
It said: “We have not engaged professional support in the manner described and we have no agreement to do so. Like any industry preparing for a potential change in a regulatory environment, we are taking preparatory action which includes bringing the industry together to share insights.
“CTF believes that measures to restrict access to ticketing will create a black market with more transactions driven underground, removing customer security; reduce the availability of tickets to fans; and create further monopolies for vested interests which will see prices driven up for fans.”
CTF said it was not aware of, and did not endorse, any discussion by guests of unlawful conduct.
StubHub International and Vivid Seats did not respond to a request for comment.
