Is it legal to resell tickets in Ireland?
Yes — reselling a ticket is legal in Ireland. The Sale of Tickets Act 2021 bans one thing: selling a ticket above its original price for a designated event or venue. Selling at or below face value is expressly permitted. The Act was written to stop touting, not to stop a parent passing a spare panto ticket to another parent.
What the Sale of Tickets Act 2021 actually says
The Sale of Tickets (Cultural, Entertainment, Recreational and Sporting Events) Act 2021 makes it an offence (section 15) to sell a ticket for more than its original price — face value plus any booking fee you originally paid — when the event is at a designated venue (broadly, venues with a capacity over 1,000, once designated) or is a designated event. Selling at or below that original price is explicitly allowed, anywhere, always.
What that means in practice
- Selling a spare ticket at what you paid? Legal, for any event, at any venue.
- Selling it cheaper to get something back? Legal, and the buyer will love you.
- Selling above face value for a big-venue event? An offence under the Act, with fines and even prosecution on the table. This is the touting the law was written to kill.
- Small community events at small venues? Often outside the Act’s designation regime entirely — but on TicketLoop the face-value cap applies to everything anyway (see below), so you never need to work out which side of the line an event falls on.
A few things the Act does NOT do
- It doesn’t ban resale. Face-value resale is expressly permitted — the Oireachtas was careful to leave the “genuine fan with a spare ticket” route open.
- It doesn’t override a venue’s own terms. Some tickets (notably Ticketmaster SafeTix for big arena shows) are non-transferable by design — no marketplace can change that, and those tickets shouldn’t be listed anywhere.
- It doesn’t cap a marketplace’s service fee — the cap binds the seller’s price. On TicketLoop the service fee is paid by the buyer, shown before checkout, and refunded in full with any refund; the seller’s price stays at or below face value where the law wants it.
How TicketLoop enforces this
We don’t leave it to good intentions. The listing form physically won’t accept a price above face value — it’s enforced in the form, on the server, and in the database. Every ticket on TicketLoop is at face value or less, for every event, in every county, whether or not the venue is designated under the Act. It’s both the law’s spirit and the promise we make to every parent here: nobody profits off another family’s sold-out show.
Common questions
Can I sell a ticket for more than I paid?
Not for a designated event or venue — that is the offence the Act creates. On TicketLoop the answer is no for every event: the face-value cap applies across the whole marketplace.
Is it legal to buy a resold ticket?
Yes. The Act’s offences fall on the person who sells or advertises a ticket above its original price. Buying one is not an offence.
Does the Act cover small venues and community shows?
Often not — the price cap binds designated events and venues, and a small parish hall panto is unlikely to be designated. TicketLoop applies the face-value cap to every listing anyway, so you never need to check.
Can I include the booking fee I paid?
Yes. The original price under the Act is what you paid, including the booking fee, so you can recover the fee when you sell at that price.
So if you have a spare ticket…
…you can sell it with a completely clear conscience (and a clear legal position). List it, the parents waiting for that show get an email, and you get your money back after the event — all of it, since sellers pay no fee here.
Last updated: 24 August 2026. This guide is general information for parents, not legal advice. The Act itself is short and readable — Sale of Tickets Act 2021 on the Irish Statute Book.