Book presentation: Ticket Touting and the Black Market

Alessandro Moretti’s ‘The Rise and Rise of Illegal Ticket Touting’ is a criminological ethnography of the black market in buying and selling tickets to live events and is the first criminological study in the United Kingdom to explore ticket touts. The opening chapter acts as a position statement for the entire book. Moretti delivers a detailed socio-legal analysis of debates surrounding touting and the largely botched regulatory responses to this apparent cancer to the world of live events. In doing so, Moretti begins to meticulously unpack the corruption and negligence which allows the illicit marketplace for tickets to thrive, arguing that the continuing rise of illegal touting is the direct result of ‘a wilful neglect and tacit condoning of the system’s loopholes’ (p. 2) by actors who would have the power to disrupt touting should they ever want to. Moretti builds on this searing criticism of the live events industry throughout the book, and he pulls no punches in highlighting the hypocrisy which lies at the heart of the moral handwringing concerning ticket touting.