Well, the NATB were first, ASTA followed in their footsteps and the other countries are taking our initiative. The Dutch group, founded as EUSTA has done a great deal of positive work and frankly, without their intervention, there would be no Secondary Ticket Market in Holland right now. The French have followed with SNIB (Syndicat National des Indépendants de la Billetterie) and we anticipate other countries will follow.

Make no mistake about it, without the Association in the UK there would be draconian laws already in place here, following on from the Hillsborough disaster laws were enacted for crowd control and somehow the “Ticket Touts” bore the brunt of the blame when in actual fact it was a silly policeman who caused the deaths of the fans. As there was no representation of the Secondary Market at the time it was easy to blame “them Touts”. It is all wrong and we aim to put some of that right, but we digress.

We applaud our colleagues in France for taking the initiative as it is not easy, the second you stick your head above the parapet you become the “Target” – in the UK we are it. This office is under constant assault, both publicly and privately and we are often amazed at the depths various organisations will stoop to to discredit us. It is not an easy task trying to get the Consumer a fair deal. It just does not suit many people as they love to throw rocks and doing something constructive is an alien concept.

The only advice we can offer our French colleagues is this – Stay with it. You WILL make a difference and working towards greater transperency in the markets is a good thing. However, be prepared to take the blame for everything that goes wrong, we know we do:-)