Abstract
The phenomenon of buying and reselling tickets for profit, known in the United Kingdom as ticket touting, can offer insights into the online–offline overlaps of contemporary illicit-market activities. While the technological advancements of the last decades have revolutionized the way in which tickets for U.K. concerts and sporting events are bought and sold, traditional forms of offline touting are arguably far from extinct. And yet the focus and efforts of campaigners, the media, and of (some) members of parliament have been dedicated entirely to the online aspect of illegal ticket resale. Indeed, legislation banning the use of “bots” to purchase tickets was introduced in 2017, and additional measures that only target the online methods of a so-called new generation of touts are again being considered. Empirical data collected through observations outside music venues and football stadia alongside in-depth qualitative interviews with contemporary touts, however, reveal a very different picture. Not only is street touting surviving and thriving, new evidence suggests that the touts’ traditional street spirit and deviant savoir-faire are now effectively being emulated by the same online resale companies that stakeholders are trying to target. In fact, the failed attempts to curb this much-vilified practice can in part be attributed to a widespread neglect of the touts’ traditional offline practices. In particular, the touts’ use of creative strategies to deceive and manipulate consumers, and to exploit longstanding, favorable connections within the official, primary market, continue to elude experts. The article situates touting alongside other illicit-market phenomena that, although impacted by recent technological innovations, still rely on original forms of offline offending. While street touting is seldom mentioned in the debates on regulating tickets, it is the very connection between the illegal resale market's online and offline aspects that could shed light on the areas that most require attention and reform, beyond technology and the bots.
Introduction and Aims
In the United Kingdom, ticket touting is understood to be the buying and reselling for profit of tickets to popular concerts or sporting events. Touts use a variety of ways both to acquire tickets from the official, “primary” market and to then resell them on the “secondary” market (Moretti, 2017). Although touting as an illicit street trade has been traced back to the postwar period (Sugden, 2002) when it was first described in Parliament as a “particular evil” that “naturally incensed” football fans (Fletcher, 1961)—and, in fact, to centuries before that (Courty, 2003)—the phenomenon only began receiving extensive media coverage with the advent of so-called online touts (Culture, Media and Sport Committee, 2008). Touting was criminalized with the enactment of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) (1994), but in the context of reselling football tickets only. The reasons for this can be attributed to historical concerns relating to crowd segregation at football matches versus other live sporting or musical events (Home Office, 1990). Twenty years later, since the emergence and rise of a “new phenomenon of gigs selling out almost immediately, only for tickets to reappear on eBay and other sites at rip-off prices” (The Observer, 2005), the touts’ unethical exploits are now regularly being denounced in the media and by some members of parliament (MPs). However, the specific focus of these antitouting campaigns has been the touts’ alleged use of sophisticated forms of online technology to procure tickets (Vahl, 2023), ignoring the numerous additional practices routinely adopted by touts to profiteer at the expense of consumers, artists, and the wider industry.
Prior to the suspension of live events due to COVID-19, two pieces of legislation were passed in quick succession to respond to this new crisis. First, the Consumer Rights Act (CRA, 2015) was introduced to target instances of fraud purportedly taking place on secondary-market resale websites used by online touts, of which Viagogo is the most infamous example. The Act, however, remained largely unenforced for several years (Jolly, 2020). Additionally, the CRA's focus on transparency meant that its powers to prevent or to even curb touting were always going to be limited (Moretti, 2017). Next, the Digital Economy Act (DEA, 2017) specifically illegalized the use of automated software, commonly referred to as “bots,” that allows touts to purchase or to “harvest” tickets in great quantities the instant they are released on official primary websites, such as Ticketmaster (Davies & Jones, 2016). The conviction of two online touts in R v Hunter and Another (2021), which relied on separate and preexisting legislation relating to fraud, finally seemed to turn the tide against the touts. However, evidence from before (Davies, 2018b, 2019b) and after the lockdowns, and since the conviction (Davies, 2021; Falkingam, 2023; O’Connor, 2022), suggests that the touts’ illegal activities have not been significantly impacted by these recent developments. A report by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMSC) concluded that “the legislation should be reviewed” (Davies, 2019a) and “go beyond outlawing bots” (DCMSC, 2019, p. 19), conceding that other methods used by touts to score tickets had been neglected.
Between the end of 2022 and early 2023, the media coverage intensified once again with stories relating to tickets for the tours of Peter Kay, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift, and for the much-coveted 2023 Eurovision Song Contest Final, the first to be hosted by the U.K. since 1998. Concerns were raised as to the technological advances of a “new generation of touts” (Sellman, 2023) who used bots to “attack online queuing systems” (Vahl, 2023) in order to buy up all the tickets. Further examples of the exclusive attention given to online touting, and the dismissal of its offline precursor, include the media's description of traditional street resellers as “relic[s] of a bygone era” (Davies, 2017a) and the available football-related arrest data. The latter reveal a consistent fall in the number of arrests for street touting, from 107 in the 2011/12 season to just 13 in 2021/22 (Home Office, 2022). While there is no doubt that the internet has significantly altered the dynamics of both official and unofficial ticket markets in the last 15 to 20 years, the short-sightedness of wishing “small-time” street touts a sardonic “farewell” (Beaumont, 2018; Davies, 2020) can be evidenced by the presence of countless individuals outside U.K. venues still actively buying and reselling tickets for thousands of pounds in 2023. In this context, the fact that renewed campaigns and legislative proposals targeting online touts only are being considered once again (Sellman, 2023; You and Yours, 2023), while the enforcement of existing laws introduced to prohibit the original street activity becomes more and more negligible, raises key questions concerning this evident online–offline divide.
The present article relies on extensive observational data of the touting taking place both outside concert halls and football stadia, and online, to argue that the traditional, offline behaviors of the touts should not be so easily dismissed. The findings reveal the practices of the street touts to be thriving, and challenge the idea that the “new breed of young, tech-savvy touts” (Sellman, 2023) should be the only focus for stakeholders in their attempts to protect consumers. In fact, the media and the government's negligence of the evergreen nature of street touting, and their insistence on the touts’ reliance on bots and technology, are arguably part of the problem in that they constitute a distraction from what is really happening beneath the surface. The present research has gathered evidence revealing widespread corruption within the primary, official ticketing market, which is routinely exploited by traditional touts who can rely on direct access to the most desirable and lucrative tickets. Similarly, insufficient attention has been granted to the street touts’ methods of deceiving and manipulating receptive consumers who are desperate to purchase last-minute tickets. The article concludes that there may be lessons to be learned from the entrepreneurial strategies, survival instinct, and street spirit of the original illicit-market “grafters” or “spivs” (Sugden, 2002). These same deviant practices are in fact now deliberately being employed by secondary market ticket websites, of which Viagogo is just one of many. While the significance of street touting continues to be ignored, it is the very connection between the illegal resale market's online and offline forms that could shed light on the aspects of the phenomenon that most require attention and reform.
Literature Review
Despite the noted levels of media attention enjoyed by the touting phenomenon in recent times, the touts themselves have rarely featured within U.K. academia. Several publications have researched facets of ticket resale, including the legal (Baker, 2022; Greenfield et al., 2008; James & Osborn, 2016), the economic (Waterson, 2018) or the cultural (Behr & Cloonan, 2020). Additionally, the overall functioning of the primary and secondary ticket markets and their transformation since the explosion of online touting have been analyzed, alongside the views and responses of consumers and the industry (Duffy et al., 2020; Waterson, 2016).
However, the criminological persona of the tout has been examined in detail only in the works of Sugden (2002, 2007) and (Moretti, 2017, 2023). The former, alongside a noteworthy investigation of Canadian street scalpers by Atkinson (1997, 2000), are deeply ethnographic in nature and, despite predating the arrival of online touting, have made an enduring contribution to the scholarship on touts or scalpers. Ultimately, Author's work is the first to identify ticket touting as an illicit-market street trade in the tradition of other studies on “wheeling and dealing” and deviant entrepreneurship (Adler, 1985; Hobbs, 1988; Jacobs, 1996; Ruggiero, 2000). His work has exposed the true extent of the touts’ offline and online methods of buying and reselling tickets, as well as the internal rationalizations used to justify their behavior. A brief review of the available literature is offered here, evidencing the paucity of research that has explored ticket touts “from within” (Polsky, 1967, p. 44). Beyond the academic work strictly relating to touting, a selection of relevant research on comparable entrepreneurial practices is also reviewed, with a particular focus on the evolution from street-based markets to their online counterparts.
First, it is worth considering some of the studies whose focus has been directed not to the touts or their methods, but to related elements that can assist in contextualizing the present contribution. James and Osborn (2016) and Greenfield et al. (2008) have questioned the coherence and effectiveness of the CJPOA in a contemporary context, in which concerns around fan segregation are less prevalent. They similarly argued that singling out football as a “special case” (Home Office, 1990, p. 47) could potentially be seen as discriminatory. They concluded, in any case, that the lack of enforcement of the Act and the introduction of the recent CRA indicate that the government “appears to have no appetite for increased regulation” (James & Osborn, 2016, p. 12) and that touting may in fact be “tacitly encouraged by the state” (2016, p. 3). In their analysis of the cultural value of a ticket beyond its merely being an “object of financial transaction” (2020, p. 23), Behr and Cloonan (2020, p. 16) reached a similar conclusion, describing the enactment of recent legislation as a “tacit approval” of the resale market.
Separately, Duffy et al. (2020) examined the responses and mobilization of both the music industry and consumers to the digitalization of the ticketing market, and to its having been destabilized by the touts’ purported use of bots. Examples of this activism ranged from the use of anti-touting hashtags on Twitter to artists such as Ed Sheeran identifying tickets that were being touted online and invalidating them, with varying levels of success (Webb, 2018; Youngs, 2018). Although the concerns of consumers, campaigners, and politicians had arguably been voiced long before the problem of the bots emerged (Behr & Cloonan, 2020; Moretti, 2020), the authors were crucially able to document the government's shift from a “passive to a more active concerned actor” (Duffy et al., 2020, p. 185) during that specific timeframe. The impact of this change and of the new legislation, however, was again found to be minimal, as their analysis revealed consumers’ continued experiences of the laws being breached and unenforced. In agreement with the research presented in this article, they found that “there is still work to be done” (2020, p. 185).
As noted, only a few scholars have gone further by studying the touts themselves and the very methods that are causing the problems outlined above. Their works thus allow a more detailed analysis of touting's online–offline dichotomy. John Sugden (2002) was able to gain access to key players within “football's underground economy” by befriending a tout named Big Tommy, who became the author's gatekeeper to a world about which very little had been previously written. His ethnographic adventures took place in the period between the enactment of the CJPOA in 1994, which rendered the pseudolegal hustling activities of the touts officially illegal, and the formation of the online secondary ticket market. It is in this space that Sugden's work was able to capture the inner workings of established networks of U.K. street touts, with their reliance on corrupt personnel within venue box offices and record shops but also on players, sponsors, and senior personnel at clubs and sports associations. Having such privileged access to tickets became a goldmine for the touts. Of course, everybody involved enjoyed “a good drink” or, in other words, earned “a good profit” (2002, p. 21). His book “Scum Airways,” a reference to the bitter rivalry between clubs Manchester United and Leeds United, offers a sociological reading of the touts’ street-savvy ways, and their ability to emerge from economic dire straits by navigating and exploiting evident loopholes within the official mechanisms of ticket sale and the law.
On the other side of the Atlantic, perhaps unsurprisingly, Atkinson's research yielded very similar findings. He too highlighted the corrupt relationships between street scalpers and those working in the music and sports industries. Further, he also evidenced the ways in which the exploitative methods of the scalpers, often depicted as “mobsters, goons, and parasites” (1997, p. 156), were in fact comparable to those adopted by primary company Ticketmaster, the “legal scalper” (1997, p. 158). Of relevance is Atkinson's description of the scalpers’ methods of “performing” their trade. These included strategies through which networks of scalpers communicated to one another covertly, both for the maximization of profits and to avoid being caught by agents of law enforcement.
Similar results from the fieldwork for the present article are offered below, as Atkinson's street observations from 1990s Canada are measured against the contemporary U.K. context of illegal bots and the online secondary market. Importantly, the conclusions of both Atkinson and Sugden belong to a time that predates the market upheaval caused by the internet. Nonetheless, their findings are not as remote as they may seem. Moretti (2023) extensive ethnographic research on contemporary ticket touts has shown that widespread corruption is still intrinsic to the touts’ financial exploits. Through interviews, observations, and detailed participatory experiences that included procuring tickets for a group of “modern grafters” (Moretti, 2023, p. 165) who catered to corporate, overseas buyers, and for the proprietor of a ticket stall in London's West End, he found that “there is much deviance occurring outside of online touting” (Moretti, 2023, p. 33). His testing of the limits and loopholes of the primary and secondary online markets led him to conclude that, particularly in the context of the illegal resale of football tickets, the online and offline worlds are never truly separable, despite what may be presented in the media.
Ticket touting, of course, is not the only illicit market-based activity that has been considerably affected by technological developments including the internet. Many deviant practices of varying levels of seriousness fall within this sphere, including numerous typologies of fraud and theft (Shover et al., 2003; Treadwell, 2012), drug dealing (Demant & Aagesen, 2023; Demant et al., 2020; Moeller, 2022), and sexual trafficking and exploitation (Antonopoulos et al., 2020; Diba et al., 2017), to name but a few. In the context of the latter, for instance, adult services websites that are routinely exploited by traffickers for financial gain have been described as a “virtual red-light district” (Cauduro et al., 2009, p. 59). Treadwell similarly observed crimes that have been “transformed by new technological opportunities afforded by the internet” (2012, pp. 175–176), while Di Nicola theorized on “traditional crimes [for] which the internet has opened up entirely new possibilities” (2022, p. 6). Of specific relevance within a market-based context, Moeller noted that “technological innovations … have enabled new and more complex ways of organising transactions” (2022, p. 491).
Importantly, while some markets and their “established local trading cultures” may have been superseded by the internet (Treadwell, 2012, p. 189), in the context of touting it is clear that “technology has permeated street life … to facilitate or improve parts of the crime script of already existing criminal activities” (Roks et al., 2021, p. 935) without these becoming obsolete. This article builds on these studies by focusing on the intricate connection between the traditional, streetwise survival spirit and instincts employed by the old-fashioned “spivs” (Hobbs, 1988; Sugden, 2002) to “create something from nothing” (Atkinson, 1997, p. 85) and the mechanisms of the online touting machine.
Methodology
Ethnography is understood to mean the study of individuals who belong to and interact within “small, relatively homogenous, naturally or artificially bounded groups” (LeCompte, 2002, p. 287). The specific methods through which such societies or subcultures can be explored generally include in-depth qualitative interviews, field observations, and potential forms of engagement or participation whereby the researcher is immersed in the subculture's “natural setting” (Atkinson et al., 2001; Noaks & Wincup, 2004, p. 93) to further appreciate its nuances. The method has been used by scholars of crime and deviance (Goffman, 2014; Patrick, 1973; Polsky, 1967; Raymen, 2018) and specifically of illicit markets (Hobbs, 1988; Klockars, 1975; L’Hoiry, 2013; Treadwell, 2012), with Adler championing ethnography in the context of studying dealers or smugglers because the illegality of their enterprise “makes them secretive, deceitful, mistrustful, and paranoid” (1985, p. 11). A crucial element of ethnography, therefore, is gaining the trust of one's research subjects, getting close enough to understand and appreciate the inner workings of their subculture, and “bridg[ing] between the experiences of actors and audiences” (Pearson, 1993, p. xviii).
Atkinson, Sugden, and Author also used ethnographic methods in the form of observations, interviews, and varying degrees of participation in illicit ticket markets, with the first describing ethnography as “tailor-made” (1997, p. 41) for an investigation of scalpers or touts. Further, Atkinson identified the approach as a means of understanding interactions or behaviors where “there are important differences between the views of insiders as opposed to outsiders” due to the phenomenon being “obscured” or “hidden from public view” but “observable within an everyday life setting” (1997, p. 41). These criteria closely align with the present situation in the U.K., where the media and other stakeholders have only been able to “sketch a faint outline” of the inner workings of the touts’ methods (Ferrell & Hamm, 1998, p. 10). As outsiders, campaigners continue to focus on issues such as technology and illegal bots that may not be as central as they are thought to be.
To address this gap, the methods chosen for the present article were thus ethnographic in nature, consisting of field observations and interviews with contemporary ticket touts. The same methods were originally used toward the completion of the author's doctoral thesis, alongside additional forms of participant observation that included actively buying and reselling tickets online. This latter approach, which is beyond the scope of the present article, yielded important reflections on the legal and ethical implications of such active participation (see Moretti, 2017, 2020, 2023 for a more detailed exploration of these). The data used for this contribution were therefore collected through observations and interviews only.
The observations were conducted in and around the backstreets, station exits, and car parks next to numerous U.K. football stadia and concert halls—the street touts’ natural habitat. Fieldwork spanning 3 years, and consisting of more than 100 h of observations across numerous U.K. cities, was completed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, new visits were arranged once stadia and venues reopened to the public, with the last observations taking place in April 2023. These were undertaken to gather new data and to measure the impact, if any, of the suspension of live events on the street practices of the touts. In this way, their endurance post-lockdowns, but also against the continuing rise of the online touting phenomenon, could be verified. The number of venues where street touting activity was observed, 33, is presented in Table 1, showing the spread across football and music events researched in London and other U.K. cities. “Other sports” include cricket (twice), tennis, and rugby.
Number of Venues Where Street Touting Activity Was Observed by Location and Type of Event.
The choice of which venues and cities to visit for the data collection was dictated mainly by the author's prior knowledge of live sport and music as a fan and regular attendee of such events, and by previous sightings of ticket touts at fixtures and tours of varying popularity before embarking on this work. An awareness of media coverage and popular culture in general, however, was also important. For example, despite not being a follower of much tennis or rugby, and never having attended a match in either sport, it was still important to acknowledge that the Wimbledon Championships Final and that Rugby World Cup fixtures, especially those involving England, would be highly desirable events. Given the expectation that the demand for tickets would far exceed the limited supply, and that ticket touts would be operating on such occasions, events of this kind were also included as part of the fieldwork.
Each observation lasted a couple of hours, which enabled the author to circle the venue several times in the case of a stadium with multiple entrances or gates. Extensive fieldnotes were taken at each location to capture the “events, experiences, and interactions” witnessed (Emerson et al., 2001, p. 353). These were typed by the author in shorthand note form into his mobile phone as the action was unfolding, to create an immediate record that could then be expanded upon for analysis at a later stage. In most cases, where feasible, multiple visits were arranged to monitor the same venue in different conditions such as weeknights and weekends, or a European fixture as opposed to a league match. The approach employed at these observations could be described as “hanging around” (Wolf, 1991), and sometimes entailed following the touts to witness and capture negotiations and sales as they were happening. Observations were limited to observing and note-taking, however, and only rarely led to interactions with the touts. At certain venues, it was possible to pick a spot from which to monitor the networks of touts communicating with each other using phones and hand gestures or adapting their positioning in relation to patrolling police officers in the vicinity. This led to the identification of each venue's “key access points” (KAPs), namely the precise areas through which spectators passed on their way to the match or concert. The touts knew this and deliberately targeted the KAPs to then facilitate potential engagement with the passing crowds and utter “Any spares? I’ll buy or sell.”
To supplement and strengthen the physical dimension of the research, 25 interviews with contemporary touts and parallel observations of the online ticket resale market were also conducted. The interviews each lasted between 45 minutes and a couple of hours, and were mostly held in a quiet pub in London near to the researcher's home at the time of the fieldwork. The participants were mainly recruited through an online post on a classifieds website and through snowball sampling. Separately, one was recruited outside a stadium and another at his own ticket shop in London's West End. All interviewees provided written informed consent. 1 The aim of the interviews was to shed further light on the more subtle practices of the touts that had been observed in situ. An example of this were the ways they interacted with each other, including seemingly coded methods of communication within their wider networks. Questions as to their backgrounds and motivations for touting, and their knowledge and awareness of the law, were also included in the interviews. Selected demographic information about the participants is presented in Table 2, showing in particular whether the sellers specialized in online or offline forms of touting. While many ticket touts operate in both spheres simultaneously, bridging the online–offline divide, the main activity of each participant is presented. None of the participants used bots or any kind of software to purchase tickets.
List of Research Participants and the Online–Offline Split.
The online observations were conducted on both the regulated secondary market ticket sites that specialize in concert tickets, including Viagogo and StubHub, and the unregulated platforms based overseas, where tickets to U.K. football matches are routinely sold to elude the CJPOA. The method entailed conducting simple Google searches of the events (e.g., “Man City Arsenal tickets” or “Coldplay tickets”), and then selecting three or four websites from the available results. The links led to specific event pages that imitated, in structure and content, the official, primary market ticket sites. Namely, they presented a seating plan and offered dropdown menus where one could select the number of tickets desired in a given section of the venue, view the price per ticket, and then proceed to checkout. Prior to conducting a physical observation, the online availability and price of tickets for the event in question were monitored to gauge its popularity and the demand for tickets. Data on the changing (increasing or decreasing) prices were recorded by taking screenshots of each individual website at different points in time, such as one week, day, or a few hours before the event. These could then be measured against the offline presence of touts in situ and the prices they demanded.
Together, the various sources enabled triangulation of the data and yielded further insights into the more subtle and hidden workings of the touts’ street and online strategies. In particular, the combination of simultaneously analysing both online and offline markets for a specific event enabled the author to appreciate how closely the two worlds are connected, an aspect that is currently overlooked in the discourses offered by stakeholders. Overall, ethnography as a method proved to be uniquely suitable for a study of touts and their illicit entrepreneurship to the extent that no other approach would likely have yielded empirical data similar in quality or quantity to those collected (Atkinson, 1997). The substantial evidence gathered in relation to the true extent of the buying and selling methods available to and adopted by touts beyond the use of illegal software or bots directly challenges both the popular narrative of the touting problem and the means through which campaigners and MPs are attempting to tackle it.
Findings
Part 1: How Street Touts Ply Their Trade
Buying Tickets
Before considering the ways in which touts sell tickets on the street, the plethora of options available to them to buy tickets can be outlined briefly. With the majority of ticket purchases now taking place online rather than in physical box offices (CMSC, 2008), new doors have been opened for the street touts. The mechanisms of the online market have long been criticized for their loopholes, flaws, and generally as being “ripe for exploitation” (The Observer, 2005). A classic example is limiting the number of tickets that can be purchased, without then checking or enforcing such a limit. Even if enforced, the touts are known to work in groups and utilize multiple names, addresses, and credit cards to sidestep these rules (Davies, 2017b; Moretti, 2017). More than 20 years ago Sugden described these attempts at preventing touting as “always nonsense” (2002, p. 22), and a more recent review of the market's mechanisms confirmed this, finding the limits to be “next to useless” (Waterson, 2016, p. 50). One research participant, a seasoned street tout, said: The memberships, none are in my name—all friends, family. They know I use their names, of course. I get loads of tickets. Say, I have 20 tickets for [club]. It's all in different addresses, mother, someone's husband, son, or daughter. (Participant “Spartan,” age range 51–60, touting for 35 years)
Another confirmed: [Club] have a membership … limit of one per person. But you just get a family member to get one, a neighbour, get four each. It's just a question of how much money you can put up front. (Participant “The Pad,” age not given, touting for 30 years)
In addition to the online primary market, touts rely on preexisting relationships with promoters, club officials, venue staff, and others through which they are guaranteed allocations of tickets passed to them under the counter, again confirming the findings of both Sugden (2002) and Atkinson (1997). The author's interviews with contemporary touts show in no uncertain terms that tout relies on these forms of corruption, which effectively enable their illicit activities. I am in contact with someone working at the ticket office of [a Premier League club] … if, say, 10 tickets get taken out of the away allocation, no one is going to bat an eyelid. … He may take them from an allocation that would probably be complimentary anyway. He's making a profit from nothing anyway. (Participant “Christmas,” age range 21–30, touting for 5 years) My contact list has taken years of work to get, it has people in there from CEOs of companies to a person high up in FIFA [who] gave me ten tickets for the [2014] World Cup final in Brazil. I have people in the ticket offices of several clubs. My phone book is worth a lot of money. (Participant “Bee,” age range 31–40, touting for 15 years)
The above quotations highlight just some of the problems pertaining to the ways in which touts acquire tickets. The loopholes and corruption, however, continue to be neglected outside of the works of the three scholars cited above. The focus, as stated, is entirely on the bots.
A recent and damning example of this can be seen in the media furore that surrounded the official sale of tickets for the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest Final. An exposé by the BBC gained much traction after following a sort of undercover operation which revealed that touts using bots were penetrating online queuing systems, depriving regular consumers of any chance of securing tickets. However, it became apparent that the particular ring of “new” touts that was being monitored managed to gain access to such systems with just 10 accounts, despite using “hundreds of bots” (Vahl, 2023; You and Yours, 2023). This was only a handful more than the random sample of consumers whose attempts were also documented by the BBC: two out of three of these regular customers actually succeeded in buying tickets, and without using any software. The minute figure of 10 accounts can be contrasted with the “8–12,000 thousand season tickets, memberships and hospitality tickets under the control of touts” at “each top Premier League club” (Falkingam, 2023, emphasis added). Consider also that there are dozens of football fixtures per week and the extent to which the touts’ traditional methods and their extensive “phone books” are being overlooked becomes even more apparent. Additionally, touts buy tickets from customers selling spares on the street, of course, increasing their purchasing options further.
Selling Tickets
The selling strategies of the touts operating in the streets, in terms of their movement, methods and forms of communication, attempts to engage with the public, and the ways in which they are able to avoid detection, are “the product of a learning process” (Moretti, 2023, p. 178). Touts, traditionally working in groups, learn these tricks of the trade either by experiencing them directly, including being arrested, for example, or simply via guidance from the more seasoned sellers in the group. These senior touts are not unlike those Adler identified as “sponsors,” who developed an “apprentice-mentor relationship” with the more inexperienced dealers (1985, p. 127). As uncovered during Moretti (2017, 2023) street observations and interviews, the main priority for the touts in order to sell tickets on the streets is to establish a form of continuous visibility at each venue they attend.
Due to the legal distinction relating to football tickets, however, the need to be visible to potential buyers at such events can be juxtaposed with the requirement of being invisible to security staff and to the police, albeit with the noted caveat that enforcement of the CJPOA has become rare in recent times. The first section, below, explores the learned techniques of the touts operating at most concerts or events in general, which can also include football matches if the touts perceive that the police presence is perhaps lacking or that officers are choosing to turn a blind eye. The second examines more specifically the adaptations to the touts’ strategies at football matches that may be more high-risk (in terms of arrest) or high-profile. This paradox of simultaneous visibility and invisibility has been noted in other criminological studies of street dealing, such as Jacobs’ (1996) work on crack dealers and their attempts to engage with buyers while performing “apprehension avoidance techniques” (1996, p. 359).
Establishing Visibility
As touched on above, a stadium or concert hall's KAPs are those at which touts routinely position themselves in the knowledge that these are the loci potential customers must necessarily pass through on their journeys from a given spot within the vicinity of a venue to its doors or one of its entrances.
Starting KAPs: Locations of departure
the termini of the main public transport routes nearest to the venue, such as a bus stop or tube station exit a car park the main pedestrian routes from these and from other nearby places that are likely to be frequented by crowds, such as a pub crossroads and junctions with traffic lights where crowds are obliged to stop, even if just for a brief moment a ticket collection point the doors or the venue itself in the case of bigger concert halls or stadia with multiple entrances, the locations next to these The main aim of the touts is thus to control a venue's KAPs and create a swift network of communication and interchange from one location to the next … . By establishing true territorial dominance of the KAPs, touts can ensure that most spectators know who they are, what they are doing, and where to find them should their services be required (Moretti, 2023, pp. 180–181).
Destination KAPs: Locations of arrival
Depending on factors such as the size of the group or groups of touts at a given event, some will be stationed at one of the departure locations above, while others at the arrival points. From there, again depending on variables including the perceived demand for tickets, they may walk toward or away from the venue in a varied backward and forward movement to establish a physical presence and constant visibility.
The extract below from fieldnotes taken outside The Roundhouse, a popular music venue in London, shows the extent to which touts may attempt to make themselves visible and to engage with potential buyers. As I walked up [toward the venue], right after the bus stop, several touts were seemingly creating some form of ‘gate’. As in, they occupied an entire stretch of the pavement so that, in order to keep walking along, you had no choice but to walk through them, between them. As you did, they would audibly say ‘Tickets (name of band)!’ On my way back down the same street I saw that the individuals forming the gate, four or five of them, were now crowding round a potential punter. [It] must have been intimidating.
Upon exiting Holloway Road tube station, a set of traffic lights separates spectators from continuing toward Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. It's easier than you think: tube, then direct walk to stadium. First noticed movements of touts based on lights crossing. They prepared themselves in the middle island and then literally ‘attacked’ the approaching crowds face on as soon as the green light hit.
Another example, from Manchester City's Etihad Stadium: Walking up Ashton New Road, I immediately spotted two guys on the left of the walkway, on the side of the street that is opposite the Pep [Guardiola] mural, where everyone would be passing through and where those coming from the other side would also be crossing. They were there the whole evening and never moved.
These strategies can be compared to those of legitimate and illegitimate street sellers alike. Both Llewellyn and Burrow's (2008) work on charity fundraisers or individuals distributing promotional leaflets and Clark and Pinch's study of “grafters” (2014, p. 20) explore the concept of “streetwise marketing.” A Canadian street scalper interviewed by Atkinson described his strategy as follows: Being on a street corner, or standing right where the subway comes out are the best places, anywhere people are forced to come by to get to where they need to be, man. Hell, I follow motherfuckers right out into the parking lots. … Yeah, I see so many guys doing that more, trying to be the first thing people see when they pull up. (Atkinson, 2000, p. 159)
This technique allows scalpers or touts, whether stationary or in motion, to engage with approaching members of the public and ensure that dialogue or even just eye contact becomes almost unavoidable.
Engaging Through “Sensory Marketing”
Once visibility is established, touts work together to engage with potential buyers through real negotiations and sales within their group, as well as through fake ones (Moretti, 2023). Both strategies can be aligned with what Krishna (2010, p. 2) termed “sensory marketing,” a technique that can affect the “perception, judgement, and behaviour” of potential buyers.
By playacting in front of an approaching crowd, the touts can attempt to influence the latter and create the illusion that the tickets for sale are in high demand, that supply is becoming more and more limited, thus altering perception, and that those who are interested should hurry before the tickets have all gone, thus affecting behavior. Touts achieve this by audibly asking each other how many sales they have made so far and for how much, ensuring that everyone walking by is privy to the information shared while simultaneously contributing to the atmosphere and excitement of the showpiece that is about to begin.
During an observation at Brixton Academy, the author witnessed a tout screaming to a colleague on the other side of the road, while running toward or rather into a group of people, about a ticket he had just managed to score from a member of the public. “This created a palpable sense of urgency” (Moretti, 2023, p. 186) as fans seeking to buy the ticket surrounded the tout. These tout-to-tout interactions would often take place at the precise moment in which potential buyers were passing by; the author was able to observe the same routine playing out numerous times in the course of one evening. The crux, however, is that whether such exchanges were staged or not is almost irrelevant: the perception of those witnessing performances of this nature, in relation to an event's demand and its “worth,” was being altered through the touts’ savvy use of sensory marketing, possibly enticing susceptible customers into buying tickets at an increased profit for the group of touts.
These methods can be analyzed against the ways in which con artists rely on an “insider” or accomplice who pretends to be a passer-by willingly engaging in forms of street magic or entertainment and have been traced as far back as Victorian Britain (Mayhew, 1862). The performers “allow” the accomplice to win big, thus altering the perceptions and behavior of members of the crowd who may decide to try their own luck if winning is as easy as it appears to be. The methods are also similar to those performed by the poolroom hustlers studied by Polsky, who skillfully missed shots in a deliberate way, affecting their opponents’ perceptions of the hustlers’ true playing ability. Again, once the stakes were higher, the players would win by using their real talent, which, Polsky argued, was “not nearly so important as [their] skill at various kinds of conning” (1967, p. 53).
It is worth noting that while the street performers and even Polsky's hustlers effectively defrauded the public and their opponents, the touts do no such thing: they rely on streetwise and sensory marketing “to maximise their profits through the provision of a real product” (Moretti, 2023, p. 187). While it is possible that street touts are unaware of the psychology and theory behind this method of engagement, which may initially have come about as an expression of their survival instincts, there is no doubt that these are now deliberate attempts to capitalize on the “emotional attachment” of attending an event (Duffy et al., 2020, p. 188).
Invisibility: Selling Football Tickets on the Streets
The specifically illegal nature of selling football tickets due to the CJPOA enables a further comparison between street touting and other typologies of illicit-market dealing, which require forms of “innovation” and resourcefulness with regard to concealment (Adler, 1985; Jacobs, 1996; Merton, 1938; Ruggiero, 2013). This “trade craft” is defined as “the artistic skill, cunning, and ingenuity employed by the street … trafficker” (Knowles, 1999, p. 445).
An example of a strategy used by touts operating at football matches is their attempt to keep cash and tickets separate, entrusting some members of the group with the former and others with the latter. They, in turn, can ensure their absolute invisibility from the authorities by staying away from the premises of the stadium, either in a pub or in a hotel lobby, awaiting instructions from the touts on the ground. Indeed, if a “ground worker” (Metropolitan Police Service, 2013, p. 8) is stopped and searched by the police, no tickets will be found on his person, granting the tout a sort of “insulation” from the rest of the group (Adler, 1985, p. 112). Such a tactic would be quite unnecessary at a concert.
This behavior can be likened to the methods of “apprehension avoidance” identified by Adler (1985), who described the different roles of dealers and smugglers and their respective and separate handling of drugs and cash at different times and in changing locations. Jacobs (1996) similarly explained a process termed “transactional mediation,” according to which the individuals collecting payment from the buyer, and those then supplying them with drugs, were never the same (1996, pp. 371–374). Additionally, the dealers engaged in forms of “risk minimisation” to “reduc[e] the probability of being caught with drugs on one's person” (1996, p. 369). Variations of this included keeping rocks hidden under their armpits or upper lips. Knowles (1999, p. 450) labeled the scheme “a type of streetwise criminal prosecution countermeasure.” When asked about this during the interviews, one street tout said: I just know. I’ve been dealing with the police since I was 10. I know where to keep my tickets on my body, or to give them to someone if we’re working together. (Participant “Blagger,” age range 41–50, touting for 12 years)
Relatedly, cash itself, it was observed, is not usually handled in the vicinity of the stadium. In some cases, buyers will have paid in advance and may thus just be collecting tickets. When exchanging cash, touts prefer to escort customers to an ATM located out of sight, enabling them to remain invisible in the eyes of law enforcement. Even if an officer were to witness some of these methods, the touts can plausibly argue that they are friends with the buyer, that the tickets are a gift, and any other creative excuse they can come up with on the spot.
Given the negligible arrest numbers, it is likely that many of the strategies observed by the author and adopted by the touts are in fact unnecessary. L’Hoiry, in his ethnography of illicit cigarette bootlegging, noticed that his participants similarly had an “apparent obsession with caution” (2013, p. 421). The examples offered show the ways in which the touts, based on prior experiences and the learning process described above, leave no stone unturned.
Part 2: Bridging the Criminal Online–Offline Divide
Online Resale
Once the touts have bought tickets—and often even before this, in the case of speculative sales where touts, through contacts and corruption, are able to count on having access to tickets and can thus sell them for profit in advance—they have a number of options as to how to sell them, including the street strategies outlined previously. The focus in this section is online resale, which primarily consists of registering an account with one or more of the secondary ticketing platforms, creating listings, and choosing one's asking price. Tickets on such websites often appear within “seconds” of being “sold out” on official websites (Merrill, 2013). In the following sections, the aspects of street touting introduced above are reconsidered in an online context, revealing some of the important connections between the two in relation to deviance and “innovation” (Merton, 1938), and the evolution of illicit street practices spurred by the arrival of the internet (Di Nicola, 2022; Moeller, 2022; Treadwell, 2012).
Establishing Visibility
For online touts utilizing websites such as Viagogo and others, visibility to potential buyers is essential. The most direct example of this is the fact that unofficial, secondary market websites often appear above the official ones in the results of a routine Google search. At the time of writing (April 2023), the first three results when searching for “Bruce Springsteen tickets” were Viagogo, SeatsNet, and GigsBerg. Below these were Springsteen's official website in fourth place and Ticketmaster in fifth. The explanation for this is that secondary market websites invest huge amounts of money on a service provided by Google called “AdWords” (Davies, 2019c), which pushes them to the top of the results list.
Once online touts, not unlike many consumers, have acquired tickets through presales—systems that are available to customers who have either signed up to the mailing list of a particular artist, venue, or official ticketing site, or to those who pay to be part of a fan club or membership—they can immediately list tickets on Viagogo for resale at inflated prices. The result is not only that the secondary market will often have tickets available for purchase before they go on general sale on sites like Ticketmaster, but also that buying tickets at prices determined by the touts becomes the only option for consumers the instant an official presale sells out.
This boost given to touts by the primary market has effectively become part of the secondary websites’ business model. The errors and the messages on official sites stating that tickets are “sold out” contribute to altering disappointed consumers’ perception of the demand and worth of attending a particular concert or event. Additionally, the unofficial sites will then use their own tactics of “sensory marketing,” noted below, to further deceive potential buyers, leading many to panic-buy: after all, if they failed to secure tickets in the presale, why should their chances be any higher in the general sale where it is likely that even fewer tickets could be made available? A search for tickets on Google will lead them straight into the arms of the secondary market, evidencing just how important such visibility is for online touts.
Google, therefore, can be identified as the equivalent of a tube station exit or key junction; it is the consumers’ de facto KAP to buy tickets online and, as such, is targeted by touts in the knowledge that countless consumers have no choice but to pass through it every day. In this way, Viagogo and similar platforms become the first sites that consumers are exposed to, exactly like the street touts that draw in the approaching crowds at a physical venue. The model is all about hoping someone clicks on Google by mistake. (Adam Webb, campaign manager for antitouting group “FanFair Alliance”)
An added difficulty with online resale is that customers may be directed to the secondary market also in instances where tickets have not sold out, and might still be available at regular prices on official sites. Through this heightened visibility, Viagogo, StubHub, GigsBerg, Ticombo, SeatsNet, and many others “are thus able not only to dominate the resale market, but also to gain a stronghold of online sales in general” (Moretti, 2023, p. 204).
Sensory Marketing
As explored above, street touts often resort to deceit to maximize their sales, manipulating consumer perceptions not as to a ticket's validity but with regard to its true availability or original cost. This is done to appeal to consumers by preying on their sense of excitement and the general buzz or hype attached to attending a high-profile event. While the street touts may have acquired this street spirit and entrepreneurial savoir-faire through improvisation and learned experience (Adler, 1985; Hobbs, 1988), the use of these mechanisms by online companies is undoubtedly more calculated. These strategies have also been identified as forms of “sensory marketing” (Krishna, 2010, p. 2).
Viagogo in particular has been singled out by the U.K. media and MPs for actively adopting misleading and manipulative tactics in order to affect consumer perceptions. A key example is its “availability bar,” which is generated the first time a specific event on its website is clicked on. The green percentage bar moves rapidly from 0 to 100 while the page loads, with the message “please wait while we check for availability” appearing above the bar (Viagogo, 2023). However, it has been proven that no checks are in fact being made (Somerville, 2019) and that the waiting page is “entirely fabricated” (Moretti, 2017, p. 244). It is a deliberate design to keep customers guessing and to alter their perceptions as to the true demand for tickets. “Very much like the playacting of the street touts, it is a charade” (Moretti, 2023, p. 204).
Other examples of sensory marketing include pop-up notifications that state the number of remaining tickets (always very few) and the corresponding availability percentage (always very low) relating to the venue's capacity. Alongside these, notifications and statistics show the number of times the page has been visited in the previous hour (not unlike eBay, for example), and a scale with the colors yellow, orange, and red reveals the “demand for this event,” which is, of course, almost always red—“high.” Pop-ups appear intermittently claiming, for instance, that the chosen event happens to be “one of the best-selling locations,” that “a user from the UK bought tickets 9 min ago,” or that “4 tickets [are] remaining in this listing on our site” (Viagogo, 2023). Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of these notifications are highly questionable and misleading. The last one alone, “4 tickets remaining,” implies that only four tickets are left on Viagogo while, in truth, four tickets remain in the chosen section (“general admission”) available to purchase from a seller who is just one of many. The tickets available, both “general admission” and for other sectors of the venue, are in fact in the hundreds or even thousands, as can be seen by scrolling through the listings below the one in question.
The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority opened an inquiry into Viagogo's “pressure selling” in 2017 to determine “whether claims made about the availability and popularity of tickets create a misleading impression or rush customers into making a buying decision” (CMA, 2017). The present findings highlight that Viagogo's selling strategies may need to be reassessed by the relevant authorities.
For the purposes of this article, it is not hard to see the overlaps in the illicit online–offline divide when it comes to both traditional and contemporary touts’ use of exploitative and deceptive forms of “streetwise” and “sensory marketing” (Clark & Pinch, 2014; Krishna, 2010). Atkinson argued that the tactics of Canadian street scalpers generated not just hype but also “anxiety,” pressuring buyers into making purchases for “higher amounts than ‘normal’” (2000, p. 160). Viagogo's strategies in particular, but those of other secondary ticketing websites are not exempt from a similar critique, have been shown to be uncannily similar to those adopted by the traditional street touts. Both forms of the practice entrepreneurially target and manipulate the perceptions of potential buyers and, in each case, the outcome is the same: consumers are being deceived into paying artificially inflated prices, while the touts profit from such ruses unchallenged.
Selling Football Tickets Online
In the same way that touts selling football tickets on the street may need to innovatively adapt their strategies in ways that are not necessary at a concert, online touts are also required to elude the CJPOA to profit from their illegal activity. Given the heightened attention that online touting has received in the last 10 or 15 years, however, it is quite surprising that the online touting of football tickets specifically is treated as a much lower priority. Evidence of this was provided above, in the case of Eurovision tickets compared to Premier League tickets, for example.
A search for football tickets on Google will, in fact, produce the exact same scenario as a search for concert tickets. Secondary market websites that are unofficial and, in the case of football, overtly illegal, appear higher in the search rankings than a club's official site. In the build up toward the Champions League semifinal between Real Madrid and Manchester City held in May 2023, the search “Man City Real Madrid tickets” was tested. The results displayed StubHub's Irish site at the top of the listings, followed by several others such as FootballTicketNet and Ticombo. According to the U.K. government and media, these would be considered “unregulated” websites that are based overseas; as such, they rarely feature in the debates on the regulation of the online secondary market. This exclusion seems to be quite flawed, however, given that the fixtures involve U.K. teams and as such will affect many U.K. or U.K.-based consumers. As in the observation above regarding Springsteen tickets, Manchester City's official site was the fourth result, preceded by the three sponsored touting sites mentioned.
It is particularly revealing that it is stubub.ie and not stubhub.co.uk or.com that features at the top of the list. This is because “regulated” sites like StubHub and Viagogo, which are in fact subject to extensive media and parliamentary scrutiny and have, as noted, been the focus of investigations into their methods, are not allowed to list such tickets for sale as this would be in breach of U.K. law. It is by listing tickets on foreign servers that they can sidestep the CJPOA and still exploit consumers and profit from events such as the Premier League, Champions League, and international matches including the World Cup or European Championships (Moretti, 2017; Davies, 2018a).
Lastly, the analytical comparisons that can be made in relation to the online-offline context are not limited to selling strategies and also apply to the ticket touts themselves. While the “spivs” (Sugden, 2002) that have been touting since before the CJPOA and the online sellers who started trading since the early 2000s are undoubtedly different in terms of their backgrounds, access to tickets, and resale methods (Moretti, 2017), there is an inevitable overlap between the two when it comes to the illegal resale of football tickets.
In the case of music tickets, online sellers old and new can attempt to buy tickets from the primary market, through presales and perhaps using bots, and make a quick profit facilitated by websites such as Viagogo and StubHub. However, the same playing field does not exist with football tickets. In the case of the latter, an established network of street touts exists, such as those explored in Sugden's (2002) work who have access to season tickets and memberships and, perhaps more importantly, to advantageous relationships with corruptible individuals working for the clubs. For sites like Viagogo, StubHub, Ticombo, FootballTicketNet, and others to be in a position to sell football tickets, relationships with traditional street touts are not just desirable, they are absolutely necessary. The reality is that access to tickets to highly sought-after and remunerative Premier League fixtures or European Cup finals is not available to everyone. It is for this reason that these “unregulated” secondary market websites have established “alliances” (Davies, 2018a) not with the “new breed of young, tech-savvy touts” (Sellman, 2023), but with the traditional street grafters. Without them, such sites would have no way of engaging in the lucrative resale of Premier League tickets on a weekly basis. The problem, as shown, is that Parliament and the media are fixating on the former instead of the latter, on high-tech software instead of traditional street entrepreneurialism, the values of which are actually driving both offline and online forms of illegal ticket touting.
Discussion
The findings from this research could potentially contribute to both academia and interested policymakers. The first contribution consists of a theoretical discussion as to the nature of touting as an illicit-market phenomenon, specifically in the context of criminal activities that predate the arrival of the internet and have adapted and evolved as a result. Following the works of Di Nicola (2022), Treadwell (2012), and Roks et al. (2021), the present paper has located contemporary touts including the traditional street-based ticket resellers in the space that exists between the “professional thieves sketched by earlier generations of investigators” (Shover et al., 2003, p. 489) and the suggested new generation of “tech-savvy” “cyber-touts” (Baker, 2022; Sellman, 2023).
There is no doubt that still-active street touts do not limit their methods to merely approaching punters and looking for spare tickets on the day of the concert or big match. The contemporary touts that have been interviewed and observed as part of this research, in fact, maximized their earnings by exploiting a wide range of options available to them, with both their buying and reselling strategies having evolved substantially since the work of Sugden (2002). Indeed, ticket touts, in ways similar to other deviant actors operating in illicit online markets (Moeller, 2022), have embraced the opportunities that have been granted by the technological advancements of the last decades, expanding their repertoires by integrating contemporary tools such as mobile phones, laptops, and the internet into their arsenal. However, in doing so, many of them do not appear to have abandoned the “long established entrepreneurial instincts” (Treadwell, 2012, p. 188) of “traditional street offenders” (Roks et al., 2021, p. 929).
Di Nicola's (2022) theorization on various forms of cyber-crimes in the context of organized crime could be of use in bridging the online–offline divide relating to the touting phenomenon. In identifying a typology of criminal activities that can be associated with or explained through the advances of technology, he differentiated between “cyber-dependant,” “cyber-enabled,” and “cyber-assisted” crimes (2022, p. 5). Briefly, the first of these relates to crimes such as hacking or spreading software containing viruses and other malware, namely high-tech crime “that can only be committed using computers, computer networks, or other forms of information and communication technology” (2022, p. 5). Simply put, such crimes did not exist before the internet. Di Nicola's latter two types, on the other hand, refer to “traditional crimes” that have either received a “boost” and have been “magnified” by the arrival of computers and the internet (2022, p. 6), or that are merely “facilitated” by new forms of technology (2022, p. 7). Examples of these include computer-related fraud or identity theft, online drug dealing, and sexual exploitation, among others.
In the context of the illicit market for tickets, Di Nicola's categorization strongly challenges the view that “[b]ots are necessary tools for manipulating the primary market, because without them it would be impossible for cyber-touts to outpace genuine consumers in the race for event tickets” (Baker, 2022, p. 63). In a strictly literal and technological sense, the bots, of course, will always be faster than human consumers. But the evidence presented in this article has shown many other ways through which contemporary touts manipulate the primary market. Further, it has been shown that touts are able to “outpace” consumers using numerous means, including their access to tickets through corruption as well as their entrepreneurial trickery both online and offline. Roks et al. identified this phenomenon as a “‘hybridization’ of street offending” and “technological developments” (2021, p. 926). It is not the case that online or cyber-touting would be impossible without bots. Contemporary ticket touting is therefore not “cyber-dependant,” but can rather be categorized as an illicit-market enterprise that falls somewhere between “cyber-enabled” and “cyber-facilitated” (Di Nicola, 2022). Crucially, the offending “takes place in person and online, often at the same time” (Roks et al., 2021, p. 926), revealing the hybrid structures of the organizations behind the illicit buying and reselling (Moeller, 2022).
With regard to the policy implications of this work, it is evident that the numerous attempts to regulate the secondary market and end “rip-off” prices (Sellman, 2023; The Observer, 2005; Webb, 2018) for consumers have just not worked. However, after two separate legislative interventions between 2015 and 2017 and countless industry-specific measures, stakeholders and MPs again seem intent on tightening the legislation surrounding the use of bots. Issues have been raised as to the fact that the DEA prohibits the use of bots to buy tickets in quantities that exceed the number allowed by venues or promoters, but that touts are using software to buy “small numbers of tickets in multiple transactions” and thus eluding the legislation (Vahl, 2023). The argument goes, therefore, that new legislation is required to address this apparent loophole (You and Yours, 2023).
Some MPs have been more critical of this perspective, referring recently to the DEA itself as a “job half done” (Sellman, 2023). Their preferred solution would instead be to completely outlaw all forms of touting, a suggested return to a private member's bill introduced by MP Sharon Hodgson back in 2010. In this context, should these proposals become law, it is not difficult to point to the fact that touting is already illegal for football tickets, and yet the phenomenon is thriving both on the streets and online, as shown. In fact, it would not be surprising if new legislation banning touting across the board led to an increase in street touting for music events. Not to mention that websites based abroad to elude the CJPOA, which currently specialize in football tickets, would attract the online touts no longer able to resell tickets on Viagogo and other regulated secondary-market sites. Either way, the success of any new measures, as with those introduced thus far, will strongly depend on enforcement, which currently leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps more importantly, these proposals ignore the significant problems that pervade the primary market, an area which remains unacknowledged when discussing ticketing reforms.
Limitations and Future Research
Inevitably, the study presents some limitations. Methodologically, in its recruitment phase, the author was not able to include “cyber-touts” who specifically and exclusively use bots to buy tickets from the official, primary market. In fact, not a single interviewee used such “high-tech” software or knew of others within their broader networks who did. While this may itself be an indication of the limited impact of “cyber-dependant” (Di Nicola, 2022) ticket touts on the overall resale market, it also suggests that future research should strive to obtain the views of these individuals, given their prominence in the media and in the arguments of campaigners and relevant MPs.
Relatedly, it is possible that the individuals who were successfully recruited could have withheld important information in relation to bots, or as to their methods for performing touting in general. The risk of encountering “plausible liars” who “exaggerate or invent accounts” when participating in research (Maguire, 2008, p. 279) was addressed by not limiting the methodology to interviews alone and, instead, by exploring multiple sources of data simultaneously. The ethnography consisted of directly observing street touting activity and monitoring the online secondary market on numerous websites and at multiple points in time in addition to the interviews, which permitted a triangulation of sources to minimize the risk of being fed false data.
Conclusion
This article has shown the numerous parallels between the deviant practices of touts operating in the streets and on secondary market websites, both of which rely on innovative forms of deceit and manipulation to illegally profit from ticket resale. Arguably, the same tactics originally forged by the street touts’ inherited spirit of survival and entrepreneurship (Hobbs, 1988) have seeped into the inner workings of the websites facilitating online touting. This is especially the case with the resale of football tickets, as these are in fact being supplied to online platforms by the very same tradition of street touts through their extensive access to memberships and corrupt contacts within the industry. Because of the complex procedures relating to club memberships and the loyalty that has been accrued over many, many years, these aspects are less relevant in the context of concert tickets; in any case, concerns around corruption undoubtedly pervade both spheres.
Despite this evident connection between online and street touting, the latter is routinely omitted from conversations around regulation. Similarly, the resale of football tickets is seen to be secondary to that of concerts and other sporting events. The lack of enforcement of existing legislation and the media coverage of touting are evidence of this. Instead, all the focus and efforts of MPs, campaigners, and the media are directed toward challenging a new generation of touts and its use of software, the impact of which appears to be rather limited when considering the true extent of the methods available to touts.
The evidence obtained for and presented in this article aims to steer future conversations around regulation back in the direction of the deviant, streetwise antics of the original street touts. It is within this entrepreneurial ability to identify opportunities and to exploit them through innovative methods that the key to both online and offline ticket markets lies. Bringing the discussions on theory and policy together, it could be argued that only by abandoning pursuits that identify ticket touting as a purely “cyber-dependant” form of criminal activity, and reverting to understanding and addressing the phenomenon as a traditional crime that is “cyber-enabled,” can any effective curbing of both online and offline touting be realistically considered. More specifically, only once the loopholes in the primary mechanisms of sale and within the law are addressed, and the corruption and ease with which thousands of memberships end up in the hands of the touts acknowledged, can consumers’ access to tickets become less constricted.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author was financially supported in the completion of this work by the Bursary Provider PGRO-LAW-02-13 at the University of Greenwich, London, and by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant No. 725194).
