Stuart Cain has left The Ticket Factory (TTF) to take up a commercial director role at Ricoh Arena in Coventry, the venue’s owner, rugby union team Wasps, has announced.

Cain, who spent seven years at NEC Group-owned TTF, will be responsible for increasing usage of the event facilities at Ricoh Arena, a complex which includes a 40,000-cap. stadium, as Wasps’ managing director, commercial marketing.

Cain has a strong sports background, having formerly played club-level rugby union and worked at football clubs Glasgow Rangers and Wolverhampton Wanderers.

“I’m looking forward to drawing on my commercial, marketing and media experience within sport and live events to help develop Wasps’ and the Ricoh Arena’s talented, driven commercial team,” he comments.

“We are excited by the expertise and extra leadership Stuart will bring to the business”

“Wasps have laid down very strong foundations in the community since they moved to the Midlands [from London] two and a half years ago and can only continue to go from strength to strength.”

Nick Eastwood, chief executive of the Wasps Group, adds: “We look forward to welcoming Stuart to our established, thriving team as we build upon a successful 2016/17 season. We are excited by the expertise and extra leadership Stuart will bring to the business as we approach our third year in the West Midlands and our 150th anniversary season as a club.”

Following Cain’s departure, The Ticket Factory staff report in to Phil Mead, managing director of NEC Group Arenas, while NEC’s commercial media team report directly to Paul Thandi, NEC Group CEO.

“Stuart Cain has had a successful seven-year career with the NEC Group, joining as group marketing services director before being promoted to MD, commercial marketing,” comments an NEC Group spokesperson.

“While we are sad to see Stuart go, we understand why he wanted to move back in to sport and we wish him well”

“Under his tenure, the commercial media team has grown, delivering in excess of £3m sales in 2017 for the first time ever. It has also agreed major commercial partnerships with a range of internationally renowned organisations, ranging from Barclaycard and Genting through to Avis, Firestone and Heineken.

“Stuart has also helped transform The Ticket Factory into a national ticketing agent that now sells 2.5m tickets per year for a range of events and visitor attractions.

“While we are sad to see him go, we understand why he wanted to move back in to sport and we wish him well.”

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While ticket bots – automated software used to hoover up concert tickets to then resell – remain legal in most of the world, the last 12 months have seen official sentiment in several major markets shift towards prohibition.

The state of New York was the first to criminalise the usage of bots, with legislation introduced by Carl Heastie and Marcos Crespo providing for up to a year in prison for offenders. The Canadian province of Ontario followed suit in September, and the US as a whole outlawed bots in December with then-president Barack Obama’s signing of the Better Online Ticket Sales – or Bots – Act into law.

The UK, meanwhile, is set to soon introduce its own ban, while Adelaide senator Nick Xenophon is pushing for anti-bot legislation in Australia.

The vast majority of those working in the live music industry agree on the need for a ban on bots – including, tellingly, secondary ticketing giants StubHub and Ticketmaster (Seatwave, Ticketmaster Resale, TicketExchange, Get Me In!) – but there are concerns among some anti-touting activists that a singular focus on bots could detract from the conversation around what they see as a fundamentally broken ticketing market.

Speaking to the UK parliament committee on ‘ticket abuse’ earlier this month, Rob Wilmshurst, CEO of Vivendi Ticketing/See Tickets – which recently launched its own face-value ticket exchange, Fan2Fan – said he believes bots have been a “red herring” in the debate over secondary ticketing in the UK. “We’ve added more technology to thwart them [bots], but we don’t see conversion rates dropping,” he told MPs.

Similarly, Adam Webb, of anti-secondary campaign group FanFair Alliance, responded to the US’s bot ban with a note of caution, highlighting that the legislation was “supported by companies who run secondary ticketing services, and who benefit directly from mass-scale ticket touting”.

Are ticket bots, then, a straw man on which the big secondaries are happily pinning the blame for headline-grabbing $3,000 Adele tickets, or could a global ban on bots actually be effective in eliminating price-gouging in the secondary market?

“Bots aren’t the only way tickets end up on the secondary market”

Reg Walker, of events security firm Iridium, says any legal initiatives aimed at combatting bots “can only be a good thing”. He concedes that while there are “systemic problems in the ticket industry as a whole”, including ticket agencies with a “foot in both camps” (primary and secondary), “any legislation that goes any way towards levelling the playing field must be welcomed”.

Walker cautions, however, that “legislation is only as good as the amount of enforcement that goes into supporting it”. A major problem with the law in the UK, he tells IQ, is that the onus is on secondary sites themselves to report attempts to buy tickets using bots: “Is there any incentive to report bot attacks when the same company may well end up, by intention or inadvertently, being a net beneficiary of that activity?” he asks.

The chief executive of the UK’s Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers (STAR), Jonathan Brown, agrees on the importance of ticketing sites reporting all bot attacks. “Bots are certainly one way that touts get hold of tickets, and it’s great that there is action specifically on this issue,” he explains. “However, we have always said that this also needs to go alongside far greater understanding and technical defences against such attacks – and, of course, a need for attacks or suspected attacks to be reported.”

Legislation targeting bots is a “great first step”, says Ant Taylor, the founder and CEO of Lyte, which powers the new ‘fan-to-fan’ ticket exchange from Ticketfly, a supporter of the bot ban in the US. “The public has experienced longstanding frustration from not having access to tickets for their favourite artists, or having to pay exorbitant prices to do so.”

Taylor highlights the importance of fans genuinely unable to attend a show having a “viable technological alternative”, such as Ticketfly/Lyte, to resell their ticket. “We’ve integrated Lyte directly with a primary ticketing company,” he continues, “so their venue and promoter partners now have complete control of the fan experience. This keeps the money in the hands of those who contribute to these incredible live event experiences and away from scalpers who purely profit off them.”

Patrick Kirby, managing director of recently launched white-label platform Tixserve, cautions that overemphasis on bots could lead to a spike in “low-tech” crime such as counterfeiting. “An unintended consequence of the ban on bots might be an increase in the fraudulent duplication or counterfeiting of tickets, which is a low-tech activity when tickets continue to be paper-based,” he tells IQ.

“Professional touts already use other, non-bot, methods of acquiring primary tickets for the secondary market”

Kirby says the effectiveness of banning bots will depend largely on the “extent to which bot operators will seek to circumvent the new legislation. The previous experience of the Tixserve team in the card payments and mobile-airtime distribution sectors is that the targets of anti-abuse measures always look to find creative ways of protecting their lucrative, ill-gotten incomes. Sometimes, it can be akin to pinning down a lump of jelly.”

Walker believes, however, that it’s extremely easy to tell when a site has fallen victim to a bot attack.

“We live in a technological age, and there is an overdependence on computer programs and algorithms to detect this activity,” he comments. Bot attacks are “so easy to spot on primary ledgers”, says Walker – providing ticket agencies actually take the time to look. “We haven’t found a single case, bar one, where a primary or secondary ticket agent has gone to police or Trading Standards and asked them to investigate,” he explains.

“Bottom line: it [banning bots] is not a silver bullet,” comments Adam Webb, who as FanFair campaign manager welcomed plans by the British government to ban bots as part of its implementation of the Waterson report.

“Moves by government[s to] criminalise the misuse of technology to bulk-buy tickets are an important and welcome step,” Webb tells IQ. “However […] not every tout has this sort of software in their armoury. There are many alternative ways to access large volumes of inventory…

“That’s why FanFair, in our response, was keen to give equal weight to the other elements of government’s announcement, particularly the blanket acceptance of Professor Waterson’s recommendations and suggestion of further actions to improve transparency in this market. (Waterson’s recommendations largely centre on proper reinforcement of the 2015 Consumer Rights Act, which obliges resellers to list the original face value, seat/row numbers and any ticket restrictions.)

“Bottom line: It is not a silver bullet”

Kirby adds that banning bots ignores “professional touts [who] already use other non-bot methods of acquiring primary tickets for placement on the secondary market”. In response to bot bans, resellers could, says Kirby, “ramp up the practice of using teams of people masquerading as genuine fans to buy significant amounts of tickets using multiple identities, addresses and credit cards”.

Stuart Cain, managing director of NEC Group’s The Ticket Factory, agrees with Walker that “banning bots is just one part of a much wider story”, but says any legislation “that allows for greater transparency in the market and help to stop fans being conned is a positive”. “There’s still a way to go, but [banning bots] is a promising first step when it comes to the industry finally cleaning up its act,” he comments.

While Walker praises the recent raft of anti-bot measures as “fantastic” – and the recent British legislation, in particular, as having real “teeth” – he warns against the tendency to think of banning ticket bots as a panacaea to sky-high prices on the secondary market.

“The danger is that while we have all this focus on bots and software, the other structural issues in ticketing could be ignored,” he concludes. “Bots aren’t the only way tickets end up on the secondary market.”

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British magazine publisher and broadcaster TeamRock has launched its own ticketing platform in partnership with NEC Group’s The Ticket Factory (TTF).

The creation of TeamRock Tickets will, says TTF managing director Stuart Cain, give the company access to “arguably the biggest rock and metal customer base in the country”, making TTF the “go-to national agent for any event promoter looking to reach rock and metal fans”. TeamRock, which publishes Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog magazines and operates TeamRock.com and TeamRock Radio, has a reach of some six million people worldwide.

The TeamRock Tickets store is hosted on the TTF website and currently offers tickets to, among other events, Bloodstock festival, Bryan Adams’ The Get Up tour and The Who’s (pictured) Back to The Who 51! tour.

“Our audience is built of loyal and passionate people who will soon be able to buy tickets under our brand, meaning we can provide an even better TeamRock experience”

The tie-up continues TTF’s strategy of partnering with well-known brands and builds on exiting arrangements with Barclaycard, Virgin Trains and Uber.

“Our audience is built of loyal and passionate people who will soon be able to buy tickets under our brand, meaning we can provide an even better TeamRock experience,” says TeamRock’s managing director, Tony Dowling. “The Ticket Factory’s technology and systems mean we’ll deliver a reliable service to our customers which will integrate seamlessly with the TeamRock brand.”

He adds: “Their proposition of standing ‘for the fans’, developing their product with a customer-first approach and strong stance against secondary ticketing, aligns closely with our ethos as a credible and authentic media owner.”

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Last month, a report was published highlighting the problem of ticket touting. You’d think this report would have been welcome news to the industry, but for me it was yet another kick in the teeth for artists and true music fans.

Ticket touting has evolved drastically over the years. It’s no longer the stereotypical ‘dodgy dealer’ trying to flog you a ticket outside the venue – these are global, well-financed organisations and cyber-warriors that we’re dealing with.

At The Ticket Factory, we’re fighting a war with ticket touts on a daily basis and have invested significant resources into trying to combat the issue. We’ve implemented intelligent software to actively look to block malicious attacks and fraudulent activity without damaging the sales process for genuine fans.

We also have a pioneering partnership with Twickets, an ethical secondary ticketing agency that allows genuine fans to buy and sell tickets to events that they can no longer attend at face value so nobody loses out.

“New York is the entertainment capital of the world, and our government should be following in its footsteps and making ticket touting illegal”

Ultimately, all we’re concerned about is making the discovery and purchase process as easy and seamless as possible for our customers and protecting our industry – but we need more help and protection to take these guys down and make it harder to access tickets in the first place.

The recent move by the New York State Assembly to make the use of ticket-buying software illegal highlights the scale of the problem. At last: an official body that recognises ticket touting as a criminal offence and is taking steps to expose these individuals.

New York is the entertainment capital of the world, and our government should be following in its footsteps and making ticket touting illegal.

The faceless, online secondary market in its current form is hurting the industry, and we need the government to pull its finger out and work with us to address touting and cybercrime once and for all.

Stuart Cain is managing director of The Ticket Factory, a UK-wide ticketing agent and the box office for the Genting Arena, Barclaycard Arena and National Exhibition Centre (NEC).