The Department of Culture, Media and Sport have, for some years now been having a series of meetings with industry representatives, this has had a stated aim of improving things for fans but whether this will have any real impact on the end user remains to be seen. You can access a range of reports on the DCM website here.

Some legitimate ticket outlets have begun auctioning popular tickets, quite what the difference is between this new practice by legitimate ticket outlets and e-bay is anybody's guess, but it a certainly that more primary ticket sellers will be adopting this practice - this means that the best and most popular tickets for gigs are going to go to those who can pay the most.  However, if you do buy in this way from legitimate outlets you will a least get your tickets even if you do pay way over the odds. But are on line auctions really the way forward for the most popular tickets?

In 2006 after many guest appearances on BBC's Watchdog head of the ticket touts Michael Rangos was briefly put out of business when officials shut down GetMeTickets.com - an outfit owned and operated by Mr Rangos - a sigh of relief was heard.

But this might just be a short lived sense of relief with the arrival of a new website: tickttout.com which went into liquidation on March 6th leaving thousands of customers seriously out of pocket and without their tickets - see the report written in The Guardian

There have been many other reports including:

The Guardian has also reported the story - link here

The Financial Times - link here

The Office of Fair Trading have a couple of reports into ticketing. The report was written in 2005. Ticket agents in the UK report (pdf 447 kb) and annexes (pdf 753 kb) . There is also a basic consumer advice document for people buying tickets. Questions for consumers to consider when buying tickets (pdf 60 kb)

We at safeconcerts.com recommend that you only buy tickets from primary ticket outlets