Ticket bots are to be discussed in the House of Lords

Touts using technology to snap up hundreds of tickets could be criminalised for their activity

Tomorrow (28 March), the House of Lords will discuss whether the use of ticket bots should be made a criminal offence. Often, bots are used by ticket touts to buy hundreds of tickets which they later resell.

Last week, a hearing on ticket abuse took place in Parliament, whereby See Ticket’s MD Rob Wilmshurst expressed his doubts on the ban: “I am not a firm believer in this… we have a number of technologies in place that allow us to spot this type of stuff and we don’t see it. We have added more technology to thwart bots and we don’t see conversion rates dropping between the ratio of custom to people actually transacting.”

Two other proposed amendments to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 will also be discussed. These amendments propose that secondary ticket websites should provide information on whether there’s been any resale restrictions.

They also propose that identifying marks – such as booking references – should be provided by these websites.

If approved, details on how the law would be put into place are expected to be confirmed in May.

(via Music Week)