The Street Spirit Has Not Faded Out Just Yet: A Criminological Exploration of the Street Methods of U.K. Ticket Touts in a Time of Bots and Illegal Online Resale

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10575677241234601
• Author: Alessandro Moretti
• Date: 01 September 2024
• Subject Matter: Original Articles

The Street Spirit Has

Not Faded Out Just Yet:

A Criminological Exploration

of the Street Methods of U.K.

Ticket Touts in a Time of Bots

and Illegal Online Resale

Alessandro Moretti

1

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 tick-

ets 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 addi-

tional 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 dif-

ferent 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 manip-

ulate consumers, and to exploit longstanding, favorable connections within the off‌icial, primary mar-

ket, 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.

1

Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, København K, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Alessandro Moretti, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1014, København K,

Denmark.

Email: almo@soc.ku.dk

Original Article

International Criminal Justice Review

2024, Vol. 34(3) 183-205

© 2024 Georgia State University

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10575677241234601

journals.sagepub.com/home/icj

Keywords

street crime, cybercrime, ticket touting, ethnography, entrepreneurship

Introduction and Aims

In the United Kingdom, ticket touting is understood to be the buying and reselling for prof‌itof

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 enact-

ment 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 cam-

paigns 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 prof-

iteer 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 soft-

ware, 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 exam-

ples 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

184 International Criminal Justice Review 34(3)