Debated in Parliament on 21 Jan 2014.
Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked the Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth whether the Government will consider regulating the organisation of concerts and other events to ensure that ticket charges paid by consumers will be secured in the event of a cancellation of the concert or event.
Mdm Speaker, currently, the purchase of tickets for concerts
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and other events is covered under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act. This provides recourse to consumers who are aggrieved by unfair practices to pursue civil action through the Small Claims Tribunal.
Most concert tickets are currently sold through Sistic, which is the ticketing agent with the main share of our local market. Sistic retains the revenues from ticket sales for most events until they are over, making exceptions only for event promoters with a proven track record. This practice by Sistic to retain the revenue from ticket sales allows Sistic to provide refunds should there be a cancellation. The private consortium operating the Sports Hub has recently introduced a new ticketing system called Sports Hub Tix, which will also adopt a similar practice as Sistic.
For these reasons, there may not be a need to introduce new regulatory measures at this stage. Instead, the preferred approach is to push industry self regulation and to raise consumer awareness. In this regard, the Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) has been actively educating consumers about the importance of checking terms and conditions when buying concert tickets.
Mdm Speaker, a few questions for clarification. I wanted to ask, firstly, whether the Acting Minister would agree that the closure of a company that organises K-pop concerts would adversely impact Singapore's reputation as a suitable venue for future concerts or shows; secondly, whether the Acting Minister would agree that such a liquidation of the company would hurt consumer confidence; thirdly, whether the Government would investigate the management of the company to see whether there had been any breach of the Companies Act whereby the officers of the company had contracted debt without expecting the concert to be performed; and fourthly, whether the Government would hold the company's officers personally liable for such events?
The cancellation of events is not something that can be completely avoided. Even in major markets like London and New York, you do see cancelations. If we look at the cancellations that we have had over the past year, the number that we have is not large. From what we can see, we have had five cancellations throughout the whole of 2013. Most of the events have had refunds of ticket sales.
In this particular case with the Korean pop concert that was mentioned, as the Member highlighted, the company went bankrupt, and so, not all of the
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ticket sales were refunded fully to consumers who had made the purchase.
On the specifics of the company, I do not have the full information of what happened within the company and whether the officers in the company had contracted debt, as the Member had mentioned, or whether there were commercial practices which were found to be not appropriate. That is something that will have to be investigated, but I do not have the information at this stage.
I would like to ask the Acting Minister whether he is aware that Sistic would be refunding the ticket sales to the consumers of the affected cancelled K-pop concert.
The answer is, "Yes". As I mentioned, Sistic keeps the ticket revenues and holds them until the event is over. Because Sistic has that practice, it is able to refund all the revenues it has held to the consumers who bought tickets for that particular Korean pop concert, through Sistic.
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