Debate contribution: Dynamic Pricing

Debate contribution by Ms Sian Mulholland on 16 September 2024.

MLA

Ms Sian Mulholland

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

16 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Dynamic Pricing

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4532683

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you to the proposers of the motion. I really welcome the opportunity to speak on it. This is an issue that I am really passionate about, having worked in a grassroots music venue for years. I welcome the CMA investigation. Dynamic pricing is not a new phenomenon. It is far more common than people realise. Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish have all used the practice, but it 'Definitely Maybe' came to light because of the Oasis reunion tour

That is one of a number of puns that I will use in this speech.

It was exacerbated by the fact that 50 million people were vying for 1·5 million tickets. Let us be clear: fans seeing ticket prices rise from £148 to over £350 is not right, and that is less about 'Standing on the Shoulder of Giants' and more about standing on the necks of your working-class fans. The practice prices out the everyday fan and removes their ability to attend multiple events. It begins a slippery slope of making live music totally inaccessible, which is the antithesis of where we want to go in promoting and sustaining our live music sector. We need to see caps on the percentage of seats that are being dynamically priced and a cap on how high a price those seats can be sold at, if we cannot get a total ban.

A major issue in the selling of tickets for big, arena-sized events is the secondary market, with the likes of Viagogo and other secondary ticket-selling platforms. I want to see more regulation of that element of ticket sales. Scalpers and bulk-buying ticket platforms can falsely inflate the demand for tickets. They need to be called to account and to be heavily regulated, because it is not the band or artist that benefits from that type of ticket sale. Indeed, the only entity to benefit from that type of ticket sale is the platform itself and the bulk-buying platforms that buy tickets with the sole purpose of selling them on at a massively inflated price. I welcome the fact that UK Ministers have committed to including dynamic pricing in a consultation on ticket resale websites that is due to start this autumn, with an emphasis on transparency and the technology around queueing systems that incentivise price hikes. While I was speaking to promoters over the weekend about this debate, they told me that they cannot fault the likes of Ticketmaster. Although Ticketmaster holds a 90% market share in this space, I have been told that that is due to its efficiency, scope and ability to handle high volumes, which is why so many promoters, like MCD and Aiken Promotions, use them. However, we need to have transparency, oversight and proper communication with ticket buyers.

Yes, of course.

Thank you very much. I will not get into a tit for tat of —.

It does not matter who is overcharging or where the money goes: if a person is having to fork out an inflated price, it limits the number of live music events that they can attend. I have to admit that I was misinformed about one element of this until I spoke to promoters. I thought that dynamic pricing was done at the demand of the ticket-selling platform. Whilst those platforms benefit greatly, especially as their booking fees normally rise pro rata — the more expensive the ticket, the more they receive — that practice is solely down to the artists and their management, with ticket sales making up approximately 95% of the artist's fees in some cases. Those huge artists who rely on their diehard fans and fair-weather fans being caught up in the hype to sell out arenas need to realise the impact that it has. In the spirit of the Oasis hype, I encourage them: 'Dig Out Your Soul' and end the practice. I promise that that is the last album name that I will drop in. During a highly publicised and greatly anticipated tour by a global star, I heard of parents taking out loans and getting into financial difficulties simply to afford tickets to those gigs. Those artists are exactly the ones who can well afford not to engage in the practice, so as legislators and consumers, we should be vocal in discouraging them from doing so. As chair of the Assembly's all-party group on arts, it would be remiss of me to not bring up the future-proofing of our live venues and the music sector in general. A recent report to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee outlined several key recommendations to support the live music sector, particularly grassroots venues. No band or artist starts out playing the SSE or Croke Park, and you can be sure that dynamic pricing is not happening in our grassroots venues. Look at the Oasis gigs: £200 million-plus was spent on tickets; £20 million-plus was spent on ticket charges; and £2 million-plus was spent on facility charges and fees. Not a penny of that went into future-proofing our venues. I want to see something brought in. The Music Venue Trust put an idea out before the election. If £1 from every stadium and arena show in the UK were to go into a fund to be distributed across the grassroots music sector, safeguarding our future, it would serve everyday music fans so much more positively than spending three times the amount on a ticket simply because it is seen to be in demand, whether it is falsely inflated because of bulk buyers, ticket scalpers or secondary ticket platforms. I welcome the motion, and we will support it.

943 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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