The crusade to ban ticket touting for sporting and cultural events has suffered a setback, after a report by the Commons culture, media and sport committee said that legislation would “exacerbate the confusion”.

Concert promoters, sports bodies and fans have long campaigned to get the secondary ticket market – where tickets are bought and then resold for many times their face value on websites such as eBay – made illegal, but it now looks unlikely.

Despite an existing ban on the resale of top level football matches and Olympic events, the report said that “to extend the band to other specific events would simply exacerbate the confusion inherent in the existing system and would do nothing to address the complaints of the organisers of other events”.

“Any attempt to ban the secondary market outright would also be a very serious step in that it would criminalise what has been a perfectly lawful activity, which is evidently valued and freely made use of by many consumers, in order to support the industries’ endeavours to target particular audiences. We do not consider that it would be practical or right to do so.”

The report did concede that it had received evidence of unacceptable practices by some secondary sellers, such as listing of free tickets for charity events and advertising tickets that were not yet on sale.