The U.K. Banned Scalpers From Reselling Tickets Above Face Value. Could The U.S. Follow Suit?

In a largely unprecedented move last month, the United Kingdom announced plans to “make it illegal for tickets to concerts, theatre, comedy, sport, and other live events to be resold for more than their original cost.”

Per a government press release issued on November 19th, “Ticket touting [scalping] has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. Touts [scalpers] buy large volumes of tickets online, often using automated bots, before relisting them on resale platforms at hugely inflated prices. This has caused misery for millions of fans and damaged the live events industry. The new proposals will stamp out this practice, improving access for genuine fans when tickets originally go on sale and ending rip-off pricing on the resale market. This is all part of the government’s plan for national renewal by creating fairer systems and giving hard-working people the respect they deserve.”

The press release adds, “The new rules would state clearly that: Ticket resale above face value will be illegal – this will be defined in legislation as the original ticket price plus unavoidable fees, including service charges; Service fees charged by resale platforms will be capped to prevent the price limit being undermined; Resale platforms will have a legal duty to monitor and enforce compliance with the price cap; and individuals will be banned from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to buy in the initial ticket sale.”

The new rules will apply just to U.K.-based companies, but to any platform reselling tickets to U.K. fans, including secondary ticketing platforms and social media websites. Businesses that break the regulations may be subject to “financial penalties of up to 10% of global turnover from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), under new powers introduced [sic] the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024.”

The joint proclamation from the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade and Department for Culture, Media and Sport came shortly after more than 40 British performers including Dua Lipa, Radiohead, Coldplay, Mark Knopfler, Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Robert Smith (The Cure), alt-J, Bastille, Nick Cave, and more signed a public letter urging prime minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, which Starmer leads, to commit to swift action on price cap legislation.

Per the November 13th petition, which the aforementioned artists co-signed along with Which?, FanFair Alliance, O2, the Football Supporters’ Association, and other organizations representing the affected industries, “The Labour manifesto promised stronger consumer protections and the government has since pledged to cap resale prices to shut out the online touts – but more than a year after it first promised action, and seven months since its consultation on the issue closed, there has been no clear indication of when new laws will be introduced.” During that time, widespread grievances regarding price-gouging for the recent reunion run by homegrown rockers Oasis intensified the British public’s focus on the issue.

The ensuing government response acknowledges that “the use of pricing strategies like dynamic pricing has been another major source of frustration for concert goers” and outlines new efforts by consumer-facing government committees to establish best practices for the industry on price transparency. “This includes giving fans 24 hours’ notice of tiered pricing, providing clearer price information during online queues, and ending misleading ticket labels – addressing the key issues that aggrieved fans during the Oasis sale,” the press release added.

In a statement shared alongside the government’s press release, indie-rock outfit alt-J noted, “Last week, our band joined dozens of artists and music organisations urging the Prime Minister to clamp down on ticket touting through the introduction of a cap on ticket resale prices. Although we’re pleased the Government has listened to this collective call, it is now imperative that they put these measures into place as quickly as possible.” The proposed measures are currently making their way through approval processes in Parliament.

Various organizations in the United States voiced their support for the U.K.’s decision to ban above-face-value resale tickets.

The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) called on individual U.S. states to follow the U.K.’s lead, in addition to ramping up regulation on speculative listings, or “ghost tickets,” which are often listed for sale on secondary market platforms like StubHub at exorbitant prices before they are actually available to purchase.

“Speculative ticketing turns live events into a gamble that fans never agreed to,” said NIVA executive director Stephen Parker in a statement. “It forces small venues to become the ones delivering the bad news and cleaning up messes created by third-party profiteers. That is not honest commerce, and it is not a healthy free market.”

“It’s long been clear that the only way to fix inflated resale prices is to remove profit incentives,” added National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) executive director Nathaniel Marro. “If it’s all risk and no reward predatory resellers will leave the market and you’ll be left with regular folks who just need to get rid of their tickets. This is how resale should work and am [sic] very excited that the U.K. government is taking bold action.”

Even ticketing giant Live Nation/Ticketmaster, whose outsized market share both propels a U.S. ticketing industry deeply integrated with resale and benefits from that secondary market via its own resale platform, voiced its support of Parliament’s plan in the United Kingdom: “Live Nation fully supports the U.K. government’s plan to ban ticket resale above face value,” the corporation said in a statement. “Ticketmaster already limits all resale in the U.K. to face value prices, and this is another major step forward for fans — cracking down on exploitative touting to help keep live events accessible. We encourage others around the world to adopt similar fan-first policies.”

Although price caps on the resale market have yet to become a major talking point in the United States’ ongoing ticketing reform initiative, steps have been made in recent years to improve consumer protections against scalpers and decentralize what many consider a monopolistic ticketing industry.

In 2024, a bipartisan coalition in the House of Representatives passed the TICKET Act, requiring all ticket sellers, both primary and secondary, to institute all-in pricing models rather than surprising customers with added fees at checkout.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order condemning scalpers and directing government agencies to hold businesses to existing federal laws concerning the ticketing space, including the Barack Obama-era BOTS Act, which has only rarely been enforced since being made law in 2016. Several months later, in August 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a BOTS Act-based lawsuit against Key Investment Group (KIG) for allegedly using “illegal means” to purchase nearly 400,000 tickets for a variety of events—including the Taylor Swift Eras Tour—and sell them at inflated prices to the tune of approximately $64 million.

According to the lawsuit, Key Investment Group and its affiliated companies—Epic Seats, TotalTickets.com LLC, and Totally Tix LLC—then resold those tickets on various platforms (including Ticketmaster) at “a significant markup to consumers.” The suit alleged that between November 1st, 2022 and December 30th, 2023, the companies purchased at least 379,776 tickets for approximately $57 million, reselling a portion on the secondary market for roughly $64 million. For the Taylor Swift Eras Tour alone, the FTC stated that the defendants purchased 2,280 tickets to 38 shows for a total of $774,970.29 and resold them for $1,961,980.65, resulting in a profit of $ 1,187,010.36.

A representative for KIG argued against the suit in a statement, noting that it threatened to “dismantle the secondary ticket market for live events, further consolidating power in the hands of the industry’s largest monopoly,” an apparent reference to Live Nation/Ticketmaster, which is facing an ongoing antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice.

“In an unprecedented move, the FTC has twisted the intent of the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a law designed to target malicious software, into a weapon against legitimate businesses and consumers,” the KIG rep continued in their dissenting remarks. “Under the FTC’s interpretation, anyone who purchases more than four tickets or uses more than one account could be deemed in violation of federal law. That outcome is not only illogical, it’s absurd. Even more troubling, the FTC misleadingly characterizes Key Investment Group’s use of standard internet browsers to purchase tickets as equivalent to deploying unlawful software. This portrayal is both deceptive and malicious. Key Investment Group is prepared to vigorously defend itself against this clear example of regulatory overreach.”

In September, the FTC sued Ticketmaster and Live Nation, accusing the conglomerate of allowing brokers to buy up millions of dollars’ worth of tickets and resell them at higher prices. Per Reuters, “While Live Nation and Ticketmaster have publicly denied several of the FTC’s allegations, they have also announced forthcoming policy changes aimed at reducing the likelihood of ticket brokers and bots over real fans, and, in turn, curbing high resale prices.” Live Nation/Ticketmaster also faces a pending putative class action, Skot Heckman v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., that challenges the model on which Live Nation’s empire is built by alleging that the corporation overcharges consumers and stifles competition in violation of the Sherman Act.

Various artists have also taken matters into their own hands when it comes to mitigating the impact of scalpers on their ticket-buying fans. Last month, fast-rising singer Olivia Dean published an open letter to ticketing companies calling the practice “disgusting” and “vile,” urging the company to “do better” after tickets for her concerts were being listed on Ticketmaster’s resale platform for more than 10x face value. The following week, Ticketmaster announced it would cap future resale rates for Dean’s tour and would be “refunding fans for any markup they already paid to resellers on Ticketmaster.”

So, could the U.S. follow suit with the U.K. and ban resale of tickets above face value? While U.S. officials have not indicated that they plan to employ the same approach, the recent confluence of public outcry, artist support, and long-awaited regulatory action has created more momentum than we’ve seen in years toward meaningful ticketing reform in this country.