Secondary ticketing, the clampdown arrives: heavier penalties for offenders

Heavier penalties for those who commit violations in the secondary market of tickets, the so-called secondary ticketing, which allows the resale of tickets for access to entertainment activities purchased through authorised primary channels (physical points of sale/box offices, organisers' websites, primary resale websites). The bills decree, definitively approved by Parliament in recent days, contains a strengthening of the sanctioning procedures activated by the sector authorities.

The measure amends, in fact, the 2017 budget law that - on the emotional wave of the Coldplay case of the previous year, which ended with solutions for promoters - introduced fines (from 5 thousand to 180 thousand euro) to combat the phenomenon and tackle offences in a market of increasingly significant dimensions. In particular, the 2017 manoeuvre provided, in addition to fines, for the removal of content or, in the most serious cases, the blacking out of the website if electronic communication networks were used to solicit resale. A further crackdown came with the so-called 'People's Manoeuvre', the budget law of the yellow-green government, which in 2018 incorporated the Battelli amendment on the introduction of the nominal ticket.

Now, with the Bills Decree (Paragraph 2 of Article 6), the power to intervene against violations is strengthened: in essence, it is established that, in these cases, the website will in any case be obscured in the event of non-payment of administrative fines - imposed by the Communications Guarantee Authority (Agcom) - for amounts totalling no less than one million euros and, the measure specifies, 'provided that the sanction can no longer be challenged in court due to the expiry of the time limits or due to the intervention of a judge in any appeal'.

The meshes of controls are therefore strengthened. It has to be said, however, that the rules do not punish sales made by a natural person on an occasional basis, provided that they are not for commercial purposes, nor do they penalise cases where the sale is made at or below the nominal price. However, the private individual who, due to sudden impediments, cannot attend an event and needs to put the purchased ticket back on sale, thanks to the same 2018 manoeuvre can count on the official fansale of the various ticketing platforms.

Summing up: almost ten years after the first sensational cases of online scalping hit the headlines and led the legislator to take action, the phenomenon appears to have largely changed. There are still those who professionally 'scalp' the tickets of the most eagerly awaited concerts to put them on sale on secondary portals, but there are prevention and countermeasures. There is a different awareness on the part of consumers who are now familiar with secondary ticketing and have largely learned to steer clear of dodgy offers. And there is dynamic pricing - with the price of tickets 'floating' depending on demand - which is beginning to be experimented with. To outlaw piracy on the one hand and put it out of business on the other.