AEG International’s Alex Hill said the live industry would like to move “quicker” than the U.K. government on the ban to sell tickets above face value on the secondary ticket market.
Speaking at SXSW London on Wednesday (June 3), the live agency’s president and CEO discussed the challenge fans were facing in securing tickets for in-demand live events in the U.K. amid challenges from “bad actors” using technology to disrupt ticket sales processes .
In their 2024 election manifesto, the current Labour government promised a ban on secondary ticket markets being able to sell above face value. However, legislation was delayed by the government, dismaying artists and industry leaders who had reacted positively to the promise. Coldplay and Ed Sheeran are among the artists to have backed the ban.
Speaking at the Shoreditch Town Hall, Hill responded to a question about the live scene’s growth and the fact that they are “working in a market with huge demand and limited supply.”
“There’s a desire here in the U.K. to protect the fans and there’s a lot of work that’s been done on the secondary ticket market,” Hill said. “I think as an industry we’d like to work quicker than the regulator at the moment. But it will always be an issue. It was an issue to me in 1985 when I tried to get tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert in 1985,” he added.
“There’s a number of bad actors, such as bots and touts that will look to make that process even tougher.”
Elsewhere in the 25-minute conversation, hosted by The Observer’s Stephen Armstrong, Hill discussed the trends of the live music scene and the post-pandemic boom for artists. In May, Billboard reported that while Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga lead the way at the box office, that growth had started to slow following record highs in 2024 and 2025.
Hill credited the streaming and digital market for opening up fans to new genres and said that Bad Bunny and BTS’ shows at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London this summer were a result of fans “experiencing music they’d never heard before.”
He added that “demand is not a problem in our industry” and said that while growth had slowed year-on-year, comparing it to 2019, for example, still showed positive signs for the industry. But costs for promoters and venues where taxes have risen as well as labor costs have provided a “pressure” on people. “We have to be careful about managing costs to not destroy or impact that demand.”
