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The UK is set to outlaw the resale of event tickets for profit, a long-awaited crackdown on professional touts that will be formally announced this Wednesday, 19 November 2025.
Under the new rules, no one – neither professional touts nor ordinary fans – will be allowed to sell a ticket for more than the original face value they paid. Resale platforms such as Viagogo, StubHub and others will still be able to add limited service fees, but these fees will also be capped to prevent hidden profit-making.
The decision follows intense pressure from the music industry. Just last week, over 70 major artists including Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Radiohead, Ed Sheeran and Paul McCartney publicly urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to honour Labour’s election promise to end “pernicious” ticket touting.
High-profile cases this year, especially the Oasis reunion tour, highlighted the problem: some Wembley Stadium tickets originally priced around £100–£150 were being resold for £3,500–£4,500 on secondary sites. One extreme listing even reached £114,666 for a festival ticket.
The new law will also:
- Ban “speculative selling” (advertising tickets you don’t actually have)
- Prohibit anyone from reselling more tickets than the original purchase limit allowed
- Make platforms legally responsible for illegal sales on their sites
- Apply the same rules to tickets sold on social media
Enforcement will fall to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). A previously considered licensing system for resale companies has been dropped.
Secondary platforms reacted strongly. Viagogo warned that price caps have failed elsewhere (Ireland, Australia) and push fans toward unregulated black-market sites. StubHub called the move “condemning fans to take risks”. Shares in StubHub’s US-listed parent company fell 10% on Monday after the news broke.
Face-value resale platforms such as Twickets and Ticketmaster Fan-to-Fan will remain fully legal and are expected to grow.
Artists and fan campaigners have welcomed the move as a historic victory for live-music lovers.