Touts on notice: government to outlaw resale above face value

Whitehall has finally committed to killing the profit motive in ticket resale, capping prices at face value and putting platforms on the hook to police it.

The thing campaigners have wanted for the best part of a decade is now on the table. On 19 November 2025 the government published its response to the 'Putting Fans First' consultation and confirmed it will make reselling a live-event ticket for more than you paid illegal. Prices will be capped at face value plus a narrow band of 'unavoidable fees' — and that is it. The markup, the flip, the 300 percent gouge: gone, in principle.

It does not stop at the seller. Resale platforms will carry a legal duty to monitor and enforce the cap, and their own service fees get capped too — closing the obvious loophole of strangling supply at face value while quietly fattening the booking fee. There will also be a hard limit on flogging more tickets than you were entitled to buy in the first place, which is how the industrial-scale touts have always operated.

The teeth come from the CMA under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Breach the rules and the fine can reach 10 percent of global turnover — the kind of number that makes a boardroom in California pay attention, not just a bloke with a bot in a bedroom.

It is a policy, not yet a law, and the detail of those 'unavoidable fees' is where this gets won or lost. But after 416 usable consultation responses and years of grind, the direction is set. FanFair Alliance's Adam Webb called it 'fantastic news for music fans'. For once, hard to argue.