If one subject keeps coming back in the events-industry news this summer, it is the price of a ticket. Not the price you charge, but what happens to it afterwards: the resale. And while it is easy to think this only concerns stadium concerts and the World Cup, the debate touches everyone who sells tickets — including a parade, a theatre show or a club event that sells faster than expected.
Here is the state of play, and then what you can actually do about it as an organiser.
Updated on 10 August 2026: the British position clarified — the price cap has been announced as a Draft Ticket Tout Ban Bill that first goes through pre-legislative scrutiny, so it is not yet law in force. The reference to the rejected Dutch bill now points to the Senate's own file.
Why ticket prices are back in the news
Part of the trigger is the 2026 football World Cup. FIFA used dynamic pricing for the first time: the price climbed in real time as demand surged. According to an analysis by the London School of Economics, premium final tickets reached 32,970 dollars, where the inflation-adjusted average sat around 1,300. Even the cheapest final seats rose from roughly 540 to 4,185 dollars. On the resale market, tickets were advertised for as much as 11.5 million dollars — with the organiser taking a 30 percent commission on the resale itself.
Those figures are a different world for a local organiser. But they expose the core of the problem: the moment a ticket becomes scarce, a market forms around it that has nothing to do with you or your visitor. Bots buy tickets in bulk, resale platforms put them back with a hefty markup, and the fan foots the bill.
Three continents, three directions
What stands out in 2026 is that the major regions are making completely different choices, as an overview by Event Tech Live sets out.
United Kingdom: the price cap
The UK is taking the hardest line. In the King's Speech of 13 May 2026 the government announced the Draft Ticket Tout Ban Bill: a ban on resale above face value — the original price plus unavoidable fees. Platforms get a legal duty to enforce it, their service fees are capped, and nobody may resell more tickets than they were entitled to buy on the primary market. The regulator can impose fines of up to 10 percent of global turnover. The government expects around 112 million pounds in annual consumer savings.
Note the word draft, though: this is not law in force. The background briefing to the King's Speech states that the bill "will be published in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny" — so parliament and the industry get to examine it as a concept before it is formally introduced. Realistically, years separate that announcement from an enforceable rule.
European Union: the Digital Fairness Act
The EU sits in between. The European Commission is working on the Digital Fairness Act, a broad law against unfair online practices such as hidden fees and misleading design. The public consultation closed in October 2025; the legislative proposal is expected in late 2026. Resale is not currently a core topic of that law — and that is where the friction is. In an open letter, more than 130 European artists, promoters and festivals called on the EU to bring industrial ticket resale explicitly under the law after all. A survey by that coalition showed how powerless organisers currently are: of 296 reported rule-breaches, all but one were ignored by the platforms, and of twenty escalations to national regulators only a handful drew any response — sometimes months after the event had ended.
United States: transparency over price rules
The US takes a different philosophy: resale is allowed at any price (in 48 states), but the price must be fully visible from the first click. Since May 2025 the American regulator requires "all-in" pricing, so no fees appear at the checkout. No price cap, then, but hard transparency.
What about the Netherlands?
For anyone reading from outside the Netherlands, some context: Dutch consumer protection here is deliberately light. There is no maximum resale price. A private member's bill that sought to limit intermediaries to at most 120 percent of the original price was rejected by the Senate. Calls for new rules persist — there is pressure on the government to come up with a more workable proposal — but for now nothing changes.
That means something important: in the Netherlands you cannot lean on the law to stop touting prices. Protecting your visitor starts with you. What is and isn't allowed, and why an organiser sometimes has to regulate resale themselves, is covered in ticket resale for visitors.
What you can set up right now
Legislation is slow, and even if the Digital Fairness Act arrives, it will be years before you feel anything of it in practice. The good news: the three things the legislators are squabbling over — price caps, bot control and transparency — are already in your own hands.
Keep resale inside your own walls
The reason the secondary market is such a mess is that tickets flow off to platforms where you have no say. Turn that around: offer resale inside your own ticket sales, on your terms. On MijnEvent you decide per ticket type whether resale is allowed and up to what price — for example, never above the original price. A visitor who can't make it resells their ticket safely to the next in line, with a fresh valid ticket and no touting markup. How that works is in enable resale as an organiser.
Sideline the bots
The bulk of touting starts with automated buying. For an expected peak — sales opening at 10:00 — you keep bots and fraudsters out with a virtual waiting room. Everyone gets a fair place in the queue, and the tickets land with real visitors instead of a reseller. Alongside that, it helps to teach your audience where the pitfalls are, which we covered in ticket fraud: protecting your audience.
Be transparent about your fees
The American "all-in" rule and the British cap share one principle: the visitor must not be surprised at the checkout. That is exactly the standard you can already hold yourself to. Show service fees from the outset, itemised, with no surprises in the final step.
Staying level-headed: no need to wait
The debate on ticket touting is far from settled. Europe is moving, but slowly; the Netherlands has shut the door on a price cap for now. For you as an organiser, that changes little about the heart of the matter: your visitor buys a ticket for a fair price, and you protect that fairness best by keeping both the sale and the resale in your own hands.
That is exactly what MijnEvent is built for: one fixed amount per ticket instead of a percentage of your revenue, resale on your price rules, and a payout that lands straight in your own account. Want to see what that costs? Check the pricing, or register your organisation and set up your first event.
