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Would price caps on reselling tickets stop touts?

Dua Lipa and Coldplay want the UK govt to "stop touts from fleecing fans".

These days, buying concert tickets is a huge expense. If fans miss out, they can often find tickets on resale sites at hugely inflated prices. Sometimes people resell their tickets because they can鈥檛 go but there are also lots of 鈥減rofessional resellers鈥 or ticket touts playing the system and making loads of profit. They buy tickets in bulk from the original seller platform, then mark them up to fans.

We hear from a Taylor Swift super fan, who has spent hundreds on resale tickets.

Now, a group of musicians including Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Sam Fender and Radiohead have sent a letter to the UK government, asking politicians to introduce a price cap on resale tickets to "stop touts from fleecing fans鈥. Ireland has already introduced a law to stop people selling tickets for more than their original price. Gary Devitt, who co-founded a platform in Ireland for fan-to-fan ticket resales called Toutless, gives us his view on what effect the law has had.

In this episode we hear some stories about buying resale tickets, and ask whether price caps can actually stop the touts. The 麻豆社鈥檚 music correspondent Mark Savage also explains how ticket touts operate, and what artists could do themselves to reduce dodgy reselling.

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Email: whatintheworld@bbc.co.uk
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Presenter: Hannah Gelbart
Producers: Julia Ross-Roy, Imogen James and Maria Clara Montoya
Editor: Verity Wilde

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14 minutes

Last on

Sat 15 Nov 2025 03:50GMT

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  • Fri 14 Nov 2025 18:50GMT
  • Sat 15 Nov 2025 03:50GMT

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