Telecoms firm calls for crackdown after it fended off 50,000 attacks from automated ‘bots’ in a six-week period

Touts are costing UK music fans an extra £145m a year, according to research from the telecoms company O2, which said it was fending off thousands of attacks each week from automated “bots” used to harvest tickets at consumers’ expense.

O2, which sells more than 1m live music tickets a year, called for legislation after a survey for the company by YouGov illustrated how professional touts were “abusing the market and stealing tickets out of fans’ hands”.