Despite for-profit ticket resales being under heavy scrutiny in the U.K. by the media and politicians alike, a high number of tickets posted on StubHub International by a single reseller for the nearly sold-out Lewis Capaldi tour has drawn scrutiny.
A highly active “tout,” or ticket reseller, reportedly advertised more than 300 tickets to the tour on the platform at large markups, sometimes three times to face value. The news was first reported by The Guardian. “These listings give very clear reason to suspect industrial-scale criminality,” Reg Walker, a ticketing and security expert, told the publication.
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It should be noted that StubHub International is a separate company from the similarly named U.S. platform. When StubHub was purchased by Viagogo in 2021, the business was divided into two distinct entities, StubHub North America and StubHub International, due to regulatory requirements. The two businesses operate independently of each other, with separate ownership and management.
Capaldi, a Scottish singer-songwriter, took a two-year hiatus owing in part to mental health struggles before announcing the most recent tour, which very nearly sold out (one stop in Australia still has seats available) in minutes, leaving many fans in the lurch and experts questioning how such a volume of tickets was acquired for listing, at inflated prices, on resale sites. Resellers in the U.K. are suspected to be engaging overseas buyers to secure large volumes of tickets to heavily in-demand events.
Ministers in the U.K. are currently considering a ban on for-profit ticket resales; addressing ticket touts was part of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s election platform. “Access to music, drama and sport has become difficult and expensive because of ticket touting. Labour will put fans back at the heart of events by introducing new consumer protections on ticket resales,” the Labour party’s 2024 manifesto read.
Last year, the ticket onsale for the wildly anticipated Oasis reunion ended in tears for many hopeful fans, and an investigation into Ticketmaster, over the initial on-sale. (“It should not be assumed that Ticketmaster has broken consumer protection law,” the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority said when launching its investigation.) The band eventually ended up cancelling more than 50,000 tickets that wound up on resale sites, making them available again to purchase at face value through Ticketmaster.
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