Secondary ticketing, 10 years on: how the concert industry has changed

On the Swiss website Gigsberg, for example, tickets for Vasco Rossi’s 2027 residency at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico are selling for over 700 euros, whilst tickets for Olivia Rodrigo at the Unipol Dome in Milan can exceed 500 euros, and there is no shortage of tickets for Ligabue and Andrea Bocelli, for whom you can end up spending up to 1,190 euros for a ‘poltronissima’ seat at the Teatro del Silenzio in Lajatico. Agcom, too, which over the past ten years has raised fines totalling 64 million, largely directed at the Swiss portal Viagogo, and is now preparing a report on the primary market to be submitted to the Government, believes – based on information provided to *Il Sole 24 Ore* – that the problem is far from resolved.

To try to understand the phenomenon more thoroughly, however, we need to consider how the concert market has changed over the past ten years. According to the SIAE Yearbook, the bible of live entertainment, in 2016, 39,763 shows were held in Italia, attracting 13.1 million attendees. The turnover at the time stood at over 415 million. In 2025, almost 68,000 shows were organised, with 31.5 million attendees and audience spending of 1.16 billion – an all-time record. And given how the summer of 2026 has gone, it is estimated that by the end of this year, the business should grow by a further 5 per cent. There is no doubt that the sector has ‘industrialised’ over this entire period. Despite a pandemic in between that threatened to bring the whole thing crashing down.

Against this backdrop, the views of the promoters themselves on secondary ticketing can vary considerably. ““The feeling,” emphasises Bruno Sconocchia, president of Assoconcerti, an association bringing together the major promotion agencies, “is that the scale of the phenomenon has diminished. We firmly condemn secondary ticketing and consider ourselves to be its main victims. Italian law, which we have criticised regarding the introduction of named-ticket schemes, has dealt a heavy blow to platforms that engage in speculation. That is the area where action must be taken. We must also bear in mind that the phenomenon does not affect all shows, but only a few dozen major events, where demand is thousands of times greater than supply.”

Carlo Parodi, president of Assomusica, the association of independent promoters, whilst agreeing with the abolition of named tickets (“‘The measure is ineffective because a concert is not a football match, where the organiser and the venue are always the same’), believes that the problem of ticket hoarding persists and is calling for a change of approach: ‘We are of the opinion that Italy should introduce the criminal offence of secondary ticketing’.

An interesting approach to tackling this issue might be to focus on the so-called ‘no-shows’: for every concert, there is a natural discrepancy between the number of tickets sold and the number of people who actually turn up at the gates. ‘In the case of the concerts I organise,’ continues Parodi, ‘we’re talking about a figure that fluctuates between 2 and 7 per cent.’ It cannot be ruled out that tickets ending up on the secondary market – and those that remain unsold – are hidden within that range. “For ticket touts and secondary platforms, given the mark-ups they apply, selling just a few tickets is enough to make a profit.”

Consumers, too, have formed their own views over the past ten years. According to Stefano Zerbi, spokesperson for Codacons, the live music industry could do more. Promoters, “as well as choosing only platforms that actively combat this phenomenon, must ensure greater transparency for users by stating, for each concert, the venue’s capacity; the total number of tickets; the number of tickets actually available for sale; and any quotas reserved for sponsors, hospitality packages, fan clubs and so on. They must also set up an independent monitoring system to promptly identify unofficial websites selling tickets completely illegally, and report them to the relevant authorities’. Meanwhile, platforms, ‘in addition to stepping up controls against advanced bots’, could introduce ‘a ticket lifecycle tracking system that triggers an alert should a ticket sold via the platform be put up for sale on other websites’.

Finally, there is the role of those who make music. “The final point,” says Claudio Trotta, promoter of Barley Arts – one of the first to denounce the phenomenon – “is that the main culprits behind the Dante-esque circle that the world of Italian and international mainstream music has become are the most established, famous and wealthy artists, who could make a difference if they remembered their roots and refused to go along with the multinationals’ speculative business model that has led to absurd ticket prices. I have no confidence that this will happen in the next 10 to 15 years.”